


Traumlieder

by rexluscus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Anal Sex, Dirty Talk, Dirtyoldman!Snape, Dub-con molestation, F/M, Fidelius Charms, Hurt/Comfort, Jossed, Sexuallyagressive!Luna, Sick!Snape, Somnophilia, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-06
Updated: 2011-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-21 02:31:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rexluscus/pseuds/rexluscus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A what-if AU. After Luna saves Sirius's life at the Department of Mysteries, Snape falls out of favor with the Order and is soon disgraced and outcast. The only one not buying the prevailing wisdom about the former Potions professor is Luna, who knows exactly how it feels to be misunderstood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Traumlieder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ms_katonic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_katonic/gifts).



> Written for HP Springsmut 2006. Luna is sixteen in this, so beware if that bothers you. Written before Mr. Lovegood had a first name or an appearance. I think I got their house sort of right, though. Huge thanks to Schemingreader and Snegurochka, my two amazing betas.

**i. A Hero**

 

Luna really didn't understand what all the fuss was about.

Her memory went a bit fuzzy after the point the Death Eaters had burst into the Brain Room. She recalled just barely dodging one of their spells, and the memory of Ron being attacked by that horrible brain was quite clear. She knew that Neville had stayed behind to help Ron while she ran with Harry into the next room—the one with the Veil in it, that must have been. And then there had been more spells, and more shouting, and Draco Malfoy's dad spitting and screaming like a madman, and she'd cast some kind of particularly nasty hex on that fellow they called Macnair. The Order of the Phoenix had been there, she remembered noticing—had they been there all along?

She'd done her best to stick close to Harry, but Harry had been making for Sirius the whole time and there had been a lot in the way. But at the very moment when everyone had been looking at Professor Dumbledore, who had appeared in the doorway like a furious angel, Luna herself had happened to be looking at a woman Death Eater who had her wand pointed straight at Sirius's chest. Luna remembered this part quite clearly: she'd levelled her own wand and said, as calmly as could be, _Stupefy!_ And the woman Death Eater had gone tumbling down the stone steps like an angrily discarded toy.

After that, her memories lost their clarity—Sirius had been at their side, herding them through another door, and then Dumbledore had been there briefly, and there were cries of "It's him! It's him!" but she never saw _him_ , if _he'd_ been there at all. There'd been a long stretch of walking and running without looking around much, turning corners and hurrying through doors, and then she thought there'd been flying as well…and the next thing she knew, they were back at Hogwarts, in the hospital wing where Madam Pomfrey bustled around them, fixing Ginny's ankle and shrinking Neville's poor enormous nose.

* * *

Much later, Professor Dumbledore had told her she was allowed to accompany Harry back to number twelve, Grimmauld Place, if she wished. When they stepped out of the Floo into the cramped sitting room, everyone was there except for Mrs. Weasley, whom they'd left sitting beside an unconscious Ron in the infirmary.

Harry and Sirius were wrapped in each other's arms as though they were planning on having themselves permanently attached. The sitting room was strangely quiet—everyone whispered with shock and hesitant relief in their faces, as if they weren't yet sure there was cause for celebration. But Harry was nothing but joy. When he met her eyes, his smile was brighter than all the candles in the Great Hall at Christmastime.

"Dunno what I'd've done without you, Luna," he said, with a little break in his voice.

She must have looked confused, because Professor Lupin leaned over to her and said, "That woman you Stunned, Luna—that was Bellatrix Lestrange, and if she'd cast the spell she'd been aiming at Sirius right before you hit her, he'd have gone clean through the Veil."

That certainly made it a bit clearer. So the Veil _was_ death—not that she'd ever doubted, not since hearing those voices behind it. But why was everybody insisting on being so impressed by one little _Stupefy?_

"I only did what anybody would have done," she told Professor Lupin, perplexed. She looked around blankly at the beaming faces now turned toward her from virtually every corner of the room.

Hands made their way to her shoulders, patting and squeezing, and the excited swell of many voices surrounded her. She felt dizzy.

Then Harry was hugging her tightly. "Oh, Luna," he murmured against her neck, "I made an absolute mess of everything. But you saved it. You saved _him_." He turned around with a smile. "Sirius! Let me introduce you to Luna!"

"Sirius Black, at your most gracious service." Sirius bent gallantly over her hand and grinned. "My hero," he said, and kissed it. She giggled. It was all very strange.

"You do realise," came a cold voice from the other side of the room, very soft but quite distinct, "that this never would have happened had Potter kept his head in the first place."

Sirius was still holding her hand and looking into her eyes as his smile melted abruptly from his face.

Professor Snape stood beside the fireplace, brushing soot and Floo powder off his cloak. The hostile sneer on his bloodless face looked remarkably out of place amid the muted jubilation that flanked him on every side.

"Snape," Sirius spat, and the hatred Luna heard in that one word sent a chill to the pit of her stomach.

Forgetting all about her, Sirius had rounded on Snape and begun to shout. All conversation in the room stopped as everyone held their breath for the impending explosion.

"If you'd given him _one_ sign, one _tiny_ little indication that you'd understood what he'd said, none of this would ever have happened!" Sirius was yelling, getting very close to Snape's face as he did so and waving his arms. "But no—you had to do what you _always_ do, and get your pathetic kicks by treating him like dirt in front of everyone! Not to mention—" Sirius drew a deep breath— "the fact that You-Know-Who could never even have _sent_ Harry that vision if _you_ hadn't stopped his Occlumency lessons because he reminded you of a time almost twenty years ago when somebody hurt your feelings! Yes—" he drew another breath— "it's definitely _Harry_ who's at fault here, not _you_ , Snape, _never_ you—you lying, bottom-feeding, despicable bastard of a traitor!"

Snape had been growing paler as Sirius's voice grew louder, his lips beginning to curl and shake, and by the time Sirius was finished, Snape was almost green. "T-traitor!" he sputtered, his eyes wild and furious. Luna found herself shrinking back reflexively; she'd seen him angry in class a few too many times, though never anywhere near so much as _this_. "Do you have something to accuse me of, Black? You'd best just come out and say it!"

"You heard me," Sirius spat. "You're a _snake_ , Snivellus—Dumbledore is too forgiving, too reluctant to believe that _some_ people are just _born_ evil, and his biggest mistake yet was thinking you might have changed!"

Luna didn't even really hear what was said next as raised voices began overlapping one another. She looked around, and saw that each and every person in the room was looking at Snape with open suspicion or outright hatred, and when Sirius went for his wand and had to be restrained by Professor Lupin, Kingsley Shacklebolt coldly asked Snape to leave.

"It _was_ Sirius who started it," Luna said softly to nobody in particular once Snape had Flooed away with one last murderous look around the room. "I don't think it was quite fair to kick him out like that."

"'Fair' and 'Snape' don't belong in the same sentence together," spat Harry, and she noted with dismay that same chilling hatred in his voice she'd observed in Sirius. She knew Harry was too good a person for that kind of hatred, and Sirius seemed like such a nice man as well. She didn't understand it.

Every time Luna thought back to that night, she recalled how sad it was that Snape had been alone in the midst of it all, hating and being hated, defended by no one. She hadn't the faintest idea whether Snape was really a traitor or not, or whether he really could have helped Harry and averted the whole disaster—but Snape had had no one on his side, and everyone, even traitors, deserved to have _someone_ speak up on their behalf.

Perhaps that was why she hadn't felt like a hero even though people kept telling her that's what she was. So she had saved Sirius's life—but then she hadn't stood up for Snape, even though she knew exactly how it felt to be the one nobody wanted around.

 

**ii. A Prisoner**

 

It was late February—just the point in the term when the children's attention spans began their rapid deterioration as the prospect of Easter hols appeared on the horizon. Or would be, if the school had been open, or if he'd been welcome there as a teacher for that matter. Drawing his cloak tighter around his shoulders did nothing to keep out the cold—the wind went straight through the fabric like it wasn't there. Snape tried to quicken his step. The dirt path was sloping decidedly upward at this point; truly, a person was either an idiot or just plain rude who put up anti-Apparition wards for half a mile round and then built their house on top of a hill. This was certainly doing nothing to help the chest cold he could feel he was getting.

The country around him was hilly, brown, leafless, and without another living soul or dwelling for as far as he could see. Before the last turn in the path, he'd still been able to see Ottery St. Catchpole at the bottom of the valley, its lights just beginning to appear in the thickening dusk, but a hill hid it now. The larger hill before him hulked featureless and black against the flat grey sky. He drew another painful, icy breath and kept climbing.

By the time he reached the front door of the house at the top of the hill, his chest was numb and his throat felt like a bobsled track. Hopping from foot to foot and cursing the man he desperately hoped would answer the door sometime before his eyeballs froze in his head, Snape yanked down on the bright brass ring he assumed was the doorbell and waited.

Nothing could have prepared him for the mayhem that now broke out.

At first there was a noise like a cuckoo clock. A novelty doorbell, Snape thought with a grimace—how cute. Then another two or three cuckoo clocks joined in, horribly out of phase. Snape felt his already brittle humour plummet. The din was next joined by a horrible shrieking like a steam whistle, which jarred the teeth in Snape's head and made his skull feel too tight.

The noise only increased from there, and soon it began to seem as though the house's residents shared space with a rather disorderly menagerie: there was the hoot of a barn owl, a monkey screeching, an elephant trumpeting, a cow mooing, a parrot squawking, something that sounded like an enormous spring coiling and uncoiling, and worst of all, a horrid clacking that sounded a bit like one of those New Years Eve noisemakers that spun around and drove him nuts.

When the noise suddenly stopped, it left a high-pitched ringing in its vacuum that Snape knew wouldn’t leave his ears for days. Then the door swung open.

Elijah Lovegood was a small, bird-like man with a head shaped like a turnip and a lot of unruly grey hair that seemed to have grown extravagant on the sides to compensate for the fact that there was none on top. He wore a black apron, arm bands around his shirtsleeves, and a green visor. There was a wide stripe of what looked like ink across the bridge of his nose, like some kind of bizarre war paint. He blinked once, twice; Snape frowned. Surely the man knew to expect him.

"Ah!" Lovegood said at last. "You're the Potions master!"

Snape's brow darkened. "So it would appear." He ignored the apologetically offered hand and stepped inside. "Expecting someone else as well? A whole crowd, perhaps? Are you running a halfway house for disgraced Order members?" He cast a first, hasty glance around the cluttered front hall and tried to sniff discreetly with a nose running copiously from the cold.

"Forgive me, er…"

"Professor," Snape volunteered.

"Forgive me, _Professor_ Snape," Lovegood said. "I am putting the latest issue of my magazine to bed this evening and my thoughts are with it, I'm afraid."

"Hm, well…" Snape shrugged off his outer cloak and took the opportunity to wipe his nose quickly on his sleeve undetected. "Do tuck it in and give it a proper kiss from me. I don't suppose you have any food or a fireplace? I am both starving and freezing."

Lovegood was not reacting to Snape's determined rudeness in quite the way Snape liked. If anything, the man became even more solicitous. "Of course! Pantries are overflowing! Come, this way to the kitchen, there's a good fire there as well…here, let me hang that up for you…" Lovegood took the cloak and handed it to an overly officious hook in the shape of a mallard's head that fairly tore it from his fingers. "I apologise that my preoccupation with my work is making me a poor host, but my daughter will see to your supper and show you your rooms, and anything else you need. You've met, of course…Luna?"

Snape froze.

"You…" The words were momentarily lodged in his throat. "You told your _daughter_ I'd be here?"

Lovegood laughed at him. "Of course, of course, what did you expect? The Fidelius Charm would have kept her from being aware of you had I not, but what an awkward arrangement that would have been! I'm a busy man, and this way, you'll have someone who can see to all of your needs…unless Hogwarts should happen to reopen, that is."

"Lovegood—" Snape sucked in a deep, calming breath. "Did it not occur to you that teenagers have a way of…of _talking_ to one another without thinking?"

Lovegood was now shaking his head with a patronising smile. "Professor, you know as well as I do that Luna couldn't give away your Secret. Only I could do that."

"Exactly!" Snape fumed. "She may not be able to reveal precisely where I am or precisely who is staying in her father's house, but she might be able to cast enough suspicion on you as my harbourer that you'll be taken and tortured!" Snape paused to let that notion sink in, before continuing in as Gothic a tone as he could manage: "Nobody, and I mean _nobody_ , Lovegood, stands up under the Dark Lord's torture."

"I think you'll find there's very little danger of that," Lovegood said, suddenly quite grave. "This house, you see—it's completely un-break-in-ab—er, impregnable. And I've got ways of seeing what goes on for miles around—didn't Dumbledore tell you how well-protected we are here?"

"He merely said that you were 'eccentric,'" Snape replied. "I didn't realise what he really meant was 'paranoid.'"

A round-faced, round-eyed girl with a lot of straggly blond hair entered and stood beside Lovegood. "Surely you'll agree," said Lovegood, putting his arm around her, "that in these times, a bit of paranoia is a healthy thing. I assure you, you'll be quite safe here. Now, Luna—" He cast off the ill-fitting gravity and turned the girl by the shoulders to face him— "please see to supper for yourself and the Professor, then show the Professor his rooms. I shall be upstairs should you need me."

"Okay, Dad." Snape recalled the girl's strangely desultory tone quite well from class. Ravenclaw—what was she, sixth year now? Or would be, had the school not been closed? He'd lost track of time since he'd stopped teaching. Sometimes he had to remind himself that it had been months, not years, that he'd been drifting on the tide without any purpose. Three months since he'd had to stop teaching and live like a ghost in the hidden parts of Hogwarts; mere weeks since the Ministry had closed Hogwarts' doors in the face of impending war and he'd been forced to find another dark corner to hide in…

It was all coming back to him, though—this girl was a strange one, spacey and slightly wall-eyed, and apparently lacking the genetic predisposition for tact. She was not often wrong and had displayed no solid evidence of being stupid, but the dreamy unfocussed voice and dreamy unfocussed eyes conveyed an air of such distinct _flakiness_ that Snape couldn't be satisfied with the circumstantial account. Well, now he had months to learn better, if he could even reasonably be said to care one way or the other. He merely hoped she wouldn’t subject him to too many of her inept, non-sequiturial verbal outbursts that passed for her as conversation. Great Merlin… _wit beyond measure_ indeed.

* * *

The girl made herself busy about the kitchen and Snape relaxed a bit, stretching his feet toward the stove. While she waited for the tea water to boil, she had the audacity to stare at him—ah yes, Snape remembered that too. She had a disconcertingly direct stare; clearly no one had ever taught her the manners to restrain it. Suddenly against all reason, he felt ashamed—as though his myriad failures and recent humiliations were written on his forehead and she was slowly, carefully reading them off to herself. Her large, round eyes never moved from him.

It was silly. He didn't care what this girl thought. Never mind the fact that she'd been there when everything had first started to go wrong, and had indeed been the hero of the hour. Her star had risen as his had fallen, now that he thought about it. The dulling and muddying of his honour had only made hers glow more brightly.

This too was silly. She was a sixteen-year-old girl, inconsequential in the larger fight. At the right place at the right time, and lucky enough to have befriended the great Harry Potter. A smug beneficiary of Potter's reflected glow.

Somehow, though, he thought she might be strange enough not to be much interested in all that. He wasn't sure. She always seemed to be elsewhere, occupied with things not available to ordinary sight—a bit like Dumbledore, actually, but without his attendant air of wisdom. No, Luna just seemed…odd. Funny in the head, maybe. (Not that Dumbledore _wasn't_.)

"We'll be having left-over shepherd's pie from last night," she said suddenly and much too loudly. He jerked his head up. She was standing where she'd been before, staring intently at him, unnaturally still.

He cleared his throat. "Yes, that's fine." He paused. "Thank you," he added, and turned to the stove. Perhaps that would make her stop.

"And tea."

He turned back to her. "Yes. Good. Brilliant." He desperately hoped she wasn't going to be a talker. He'd be blessedly free from her crackpot father but she could easily be underfoot all day long, and that would be good for nobody.

She was now taking their dinner out of the oven. "Are you here because you've been kicked out of the Order?" she asked.

He gaped at her. He was torn between the automatic "Of course not!" on the tip of his tongue and his desire not to dignify such a question with a response. Finally, he settled on: "Who planted that idea in your head?"

"Oh, nobody." She was scooping the pie onto plates. "But I know how everybody's been saying nasty things about you for the last year—even nastier than they usually say about you, that is—and I thought perhaps they'd finally gone and kicked you out."

It was amazing, how she spoke in a completely normal tone, as though explaining why she'd bought the brown eggs instead of the white at the market, and not rubbing salt in each one of his gaping wounds.

He was speaking before he even thought about it. "I am here," he said tightly, "because the Dark Lord found out I'd been carrying his secrets back to Dumbledore, and the Fidelius Charm hiding me under your father's roof is the only thing between me and a messy death at the hands of my old Death Eater _friends_."

"Oh, I see." She brought the plates to the table, then returned to the counter to collect the tea. "Since there's nothing you can do for the Order anymore, they've sent you here to wait things out until the war's over."

His head filled with the awful sound of his teeth grinding. He said nothing, picked up his fork and stabbed into the steaming mush.

* * *

After they'd eaten, Luna showed him to the cramped suite of rooms he'd be living in—for Merlin knew how long. He glanced around quickly, noting the layout, the furnishings—the mahogany roll-top desk, the non-matching settee upholstered in worn green velour, the narrow bed pushed against the wall, the precarious stacks of books without shelves. There was a globe and what looked like an astrolabe in the corner; evidently, he was moving into the Lovegoods' miscellaneous storage space. Well, that was just fine; appropriate, even, since he was another item in need of storing. Luna watched him quietly as he wandered about the place, poking his nose into dusty corners and frowning. Eventually, she left him alone.

Snape lit a single candle, sat down on the bed, and sighed. He enlarged the steamer trunk he'd been carrying in his pocket and pulled off his boots one at a time, letting each one fall with a satisfying _thunk_ on the floor. Then he curled up on top of the duvet, and within moments he was asleep.

* * *

Luna climbed the narrow staircase to her bedroom and curled up on her bed where she'd left _A Field Guide to Magical Creatures of the Amazon_ lying open. She cast a glance at the South American Quetzalcoatl preening its breast feathers on the right-hand page. "A recently discovered cousin of the North American Quetzalcoatl, this beast is smaller but far more deadly," the caption read, and then below it, "Both species are actually members of the dragon family." Funny that something so pretty could be so dangerous. But the book said that while its presence meant swift and violent death for its prey, it was remarkably shy of humans, and had only ever been photographed twice.

She fell backward onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. Professor Snape was in her house. How she longed to tell Harry and Neville—well, maybe just Harry, since Neville would probably have nightmares. But her father had told her she was not to speak a word. The Fidelius Charm that protected Professor Snape's whereabouts would not let her speak about him to her friends anyway. It felt like that secret was burning a hole in her chest trying to get out. What would they say? Would they offer her sympathy, attempt to rescue her?

It was funny how passionately everyone hated him—even the adults. She remembered how long and loudly Sirius had gone on about Snape when she'd had supper at number twelve, Grimmauld Place. But from the sound of it, Sirius wasn't the one with grounds to hold a grudge. Harry had started to look uncomfortable when Sirius had begun gleefully recounting a prank he'd pulled on "Snivellus" during their third year, something involving the showers and chasing a charmed pair of trousers through the castle corridors for hours. Luna had kept quiet, pretending to be thinking of something else. She didn't much care for pranks, no matter how nasty a person the victim happened to be, and she had enough experience with insulting nicknames not to credit them with much value either. They never bothered her personally, but Professor Snape was obviously a good deal more sensitive than she was. And besides all that, she just didn't think Snape was nearly as nasty as everyone else thought he was.

He'd been quite rude to her dad, that was true. Intentionally so, like he was trying to make a point. She couldn't figure out why. Then he'd been somewhat nasty and cold to her at supper, but not exceptionally so. He'd seemed nervous, perhaps a bit depressed. When she'd asked him if he'd been kicked out of the Order, he'd acted very strangely indeed. It was a bit like the way he'd acted when Sirius had screamed at him after the battle at the Department of Mysteries—indignant and ashamed all at once. But she hadn't screamed at him, she'd just asked a simple question. He was such a peculiar person.

Now he'd be sharing her house, possibly for a very long time. He'd be at every meal, and she might have to do things like fetch him books he wanted, or help find other ways to entertain him. He was likely to be just as bored as she was, cooped up in a house waiting for the war to be over. At least she got to stay in her own house. She wondered if Professor Snape had any family, or if he was here because he literally didn't have anyone else. That was really rather a sad thought.

* * *

In the morning, the kitchen table was playing host to a veritable parliament of owls.

Luna recognised most of them. There was Winifred, Neville's grandmother's fussy old owl, who had two tufts of feathers and black markings that made her look exactly as though she were wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses; Hedwig, who evidently thought she was a princess among paupers and was sitting slightly apart from the rest, feathers fluffed; and a stately, elderly owl Luna recognized as belonging to Dumbledore. Two other owls didn't look familiar; probably business for her dad.

The final member of this kitchen-table gathering was Professor Snape, looking badly-slept and black-tempered, sitting as far from the owls as he could manage and digging glumly into his bowl of porridge.

"The tea is almost ready," Luna said helpfully, more to make conversation than anything.

The Professor nodded without raising his eyes, as though thanking the porridge for this information.

Luna began on the letters. Neville's was largely a day-by-day account of his life since he'd last written, which had been a week ago. Despite the company of the Snapping Spearvine Madam Sprout had given him to keep him company when the school had closed, he was bored out of his mind; there were only so many tricks he could teach it before it became confused and curled up to sulk. He desperately wished he were allowed to do magic so he could at least practice some of the defence spells he'd learned with the D.A. and be able to feel somewhat useful instead of sitting around helplessly waiting for the war to come to his doorstep. Also, he missed her.

She sighed and set the letter down. Ex-boyfriends could be so… _mopey_. She knew he was hoping she'd take pity on him and agree to go out with him again; maybe it was time for a letter making it plain that this hope had no chance of becoming reality. They'd gone together for most of her fifth year, but by the beginning of her sixth (which had been interrupted by the Ministry), she'd realised she _liked_ Neville, loved him as a dear friend of course, but that was all. His kisses were slobbery and the way he touched her was a little rough and clumsy, like he was testing her for ripeness rather than trying to make her feel good. She knew he didn't mean to be that way; he just had no idea what he was doing. She took up the next letter.

"This one's from Harry," she told the room. Maybe that would provoke a reaction of some kind.

It did. Snape narrowed his eyes to two glittering specks and peered at her intently. "I see that _I_ shall have to be the one to pour the tea," he said with exaggerated irritation, and stalked over to the stove. Luna shrugged and began to read.

Harry's letter was a lot like Neville's (but without the mopey ex-boyfriend bit). He was at Grimmauld Place with Sirius, of course (though the letter said "Snuffles" and "Snuffles's house," not "Sirius" or "Grimmauld Place"), which had been fun at first because it was a dream come true to do nothing but get up to mischief with Sirius all day; but it was too dangerous these days to get up to much interesting mischief, and Sirius was back to brooding about his usefulness to the Order, and what's worse, he was insisting that Harry read and keep up with the schoolwork he was missing out on. Harry concluded his letter with a sentiment that echoed Neville's; he wished he could practice magic, but Sirius was even stricter about that than he was about the schoolwork.

Luna frowned. Harry and Neville at least would be seventeen in a few months, but she and Ginny both had another year to go—more than a year, in Ginny's case. For once, Luna appreciated her early birthday. But a year was a long time, and no one knew when Hogwarts would reopen, and who knew how long this war was going to go on anyway, and what if the need arose for them to fight in it? There was no time for silly Ministry rules about underage wizardry when there was a war on. Luna was quite sure even her dad was with her on this one, and after what had happened to her mother, there was no one in the Wizarding World more cautious about supervising his child's use of magic than Luna's father.

As a matter of fact, the last letter, the one from Dumbledore, was addressed to him.

She read the first few lines. _Dear Elijah_ … "Oh look," she said to Snape. "This one's about you."

"What?" The parchment was snatched from her fingers. "Let me see that." He began to scan the page. " _Dear Severus, stop reading other people's_ —oh, for Merlin's sake! That sodding—here!" He shoved the letter back at her. "Read this aloud."

" _Dear Luna_ ," she read. " _No aiding and abetting. Best wishes, Professor Dumbledore_."

She set the letter down and looked up at him calmly.

Snape's expression was dark and thunderous. He spun around and began clattering about with the tea things, slamming the kettle down with a crash and assembling cups and saucers with resounding peals. "He knows how much I hate that," Luna heard him mutter under his breath. "Knows I hate it and does it just to spite me!"

"Knows you hate what?" she asked.

He spun around and stared at her with mortal affront. Evidently, he was permitted to mutter aloud but questioning him about the things said was taboo.

Then he did a curious thing. "Talking about me behind my back," he replied stiffly and with ever so slightly less anger than before. "Professor Dumbledore knows it drives me insane. He thinks it's _funny_."

"I'm sure he's not saying anything nasty about you," said Luna, very reasonably.

"Oh no, of course not. It's all in good fun, I'm sure." Snape set the tea down on the table, practically dropping Luna's cup in front of her and tipping some over the side into the saucer. "Nothing _anyone_ ever says about me could ever do _any_ harm, could it? It's all just idle chatter!"

She was losing his train of thought now.

"Let me tell you something, girl," he went on with a piercing, narrow-eyed glare. " _You're_ the reason I'm here—did you know that?"

She frowned. "How do you figure that, Professor?"

"I am here," he said, "because _someone_ , someone who shall remain nameless but is often referred to as Sirius Black, let slip my role in that breathtaking display of inanity you and your little friends put on a year and a half ago at the Ministry. The Dark Lord discovered I had warned the Order that Potter was heading there—and he was most displeased. How do you suppose he got that information?"

"I…don't have any idea, sir," she replied carefully.

"You see, Black has a house-elf. A house-elf that feels far more affinity for the Dark Lord's followers than he does for his master—and who has been known to carry information to them on occasion. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

"Well…" she said hesitantly, "in all fairness, it could have been _anybody_ —"

"IT WAS BLACK!" The startled owls all leapt and fluttered in unison, then gradually settled amid a snow of feathers. Snape was breathing hard. "It was Black," he repeated, a bit more calmly, "and _you_ , Miss Lovegood, are the reason Black is still breathing, rather than writhing in agony in the seventh circle of Hell where he belongs."

"You can hardly blame _me_ ," she said indignantly. "I didn't _mean_ to get you in trouble with the—with You-Know-Who."

Snape sat back with a mirthless smile of grim vindication. "Of course not. Nobody ever _means_ to do anything. No, it's never anybody's fault…"

Luna turned away from him and reached across the table, gently displacing an owl in the process, to open a pneumatic tube that curved down from the ceiling. "Dad's office," she said, and dropped Dumbledore's letter inside. It vanished with a faint _floosh_.

Propping her chin in her hands, she thought hard for a moment about what she'd seen in the letter. Then she made a sudden connection. "Did Professor Dumbledore ask my dad to take you in," she asked, "only after everyone else in the Order had refused?"

He stared at her as though her hair had just burst into flames. Then his expression melted into something more like hurt, just before he scowled and snapped, "How the hell should I know?" He picked up his saucer and stood. "Impertinent child. Why don't you ask Dumbledore—if you're so chummy with him." With that, he swept out of the kitchen.

She frowned. That _was_ what Dumbledore's letter appeared to be saying. And there was something about that which was, by her estimation, simply not right. She knew not many of the Order members liked Professor Snape, and it was okay not to like somebody, but this was his _life_ they were talking about. Wasn't there a point at which people ought to grow up and put those sorts of things aside?

Then again, Harry had told her what Snape had wanted to do to Sirius when Sirius had first escaped from Azkaban. If anybody had trouble growing up and putting dislikes aside, it was Snape himself. Still, it troubled her.

* * *

It took a little over five days with the Lovegoods for him to panic.

At first, he'd asked Dumbledore— _begged_ , if he were being honest with himself—for something to do. Less than twenty-four hours after he arrived, he'd owled the Headmaster for something, _anything_ , a problem or a puzzle he could apply himself to, a bit of strategy that needed working out. Dumbledore's response had been brief: _Dear Severus, Don't worry, everything is well in hand. Do try to relax and enjoy your holiday. Your Friend, Albus Dumbledore_.

 _Holiday_. The word itself made his mouth shrivel like burning parchment.

It wasn't the boredom that got him in the end; real boredom took time to drive you nuts. It was instead the feeling of being trapped—in a house in the middle of nowhere, in a life where he could no longer be of use to anybody, and in a world that only had two current options to offer him: purposeless monotony, or slow and violent death. He wondered if there would ever come a point when the latter seemed the more attractive of the two.

He knew it was entirely psychological, but that didn't get rid of the feeling that the walls were closing in on him. Why the Lovegoods had to live in this cramped little country cottage, narrow and vertical like a rickety wooden stovepipe…and naturally he'd been given the absolute lowest point in the house, practically the cellar, with the whole damn house bearing down on him from above. He vaguely recalled that this never used to bother him in his dungeon at Hogwarts, but he'd never felt like a prisoner there, never felt the shutting of his door like the closing of a coffin lid over his head, heard in the retreating footsteps the only person who might heed his cries for help— _Don't bury me! I'm not dead!_

Opening several of the windows in the low-ceilinged room allowed February to rush in and irritate his cough, but it also made the rising panic recede just a bit. His recently unpacked books were stacked neatly around the little roll-top desk, making an island of order amid the dusty knick-knacks and clutter, and he settled into his chair to let the spell of reading transport him out of his present circumstances for as long as he could concentrate on the words.

After less than an hour, he gave up in disgust.

Snape had never been an intellectual. Knowledge was a means to an end, not a pleasure in itself—as a schoolboy, it had been his ticket to a life he was in control of, and once that dream had been dashed, it became his best bet for surviving in the shark-infested waters of double-agent-hood. But it did him no good now. He needed none of it, and was needed by no one. The coin he had to trade on had always been his utility—Dumbledore and the Dark Lord alike could show him mercy because he was _useful_ to them. Now there was no collateral forcing anybody to tolerate him, no guarantee that he wouldn't simply be forgotten about and left here to rot—maybe Lovegood could simply board up this wing of the house and save everyone the trouble of deciding how best to dispose of him. He knew of nobody, least of all his "comrades" in the Order, who would particularly object.

At least weird little Luna Lovegood didn't seem too offended by his presence. He didn't know how he'd have handled the shame if even _she'd_ rejected him. Not that he cared what she thought of him in the slightest. It was just the principle of the thing.

So he'd been abandoned here. It wasn't surprising—he'd always known it could happen. He'd taken his eye off one of his enemies for a moment too long and now he was paying for that stupidity. Losers deserved what they got—he'd always believed that and he wasn't going to change his tune now. In fact, he could contemplate that principle to its very limits as the hours and days and months gathered, as the dust piled thick and the cobwebs grew and he became indistinguishable from the odd bits of furniture he'd been stuffed into a room with. He had nothing but time.

Back at his desk, the words in his book swam before his eyes, and he moved woodenly to the settee. He was really starting to feel genuinely awful—and the worst part was that he knew exactly where his potion for treating claustrophobia was in his office and he'd forgotten to pack it. He would owl for it in the morning—at the moment, his body felt glued in place, and the cold was numbing his mind. He couldn't seem to recall the incantation for a warming charm. Something like a pleasant blankness settled over him, and he dropped his book, curling up, making a tight ball of his body. At some point, he must have gone to sleep.

* * *

On Wednesday morning, Luna was opening the mail at the kitchen table again. This time she was alone. An open jar of Maraschino cherries stood at her elbow, and her fingertips were bright red.

She now had several days of experience to draw upon, and while she couldn't say she entirely understood Professor Snape yet, she had made some progress. She'd concluded he was a bit like a child in certain ways—desperate for attention, but unwilling to ask for it directly. Actually, she wondered what point there was in even saying something was "like a child" anymore, since so many adults did things one generally attributed to children. But Snape really _was_ like a child sometimes—or at least a part of him was, a part that hadn't grown up with the rest of him and had hung back petulantly in the past, angry and sulky and lonely. She supposed that maybe this was precisely why she felt at ease with him—he wasn't quite an adult, and she was nearly one. There were several areas in which her wisdom far outstripped his, certainly. How to treat other people was only one of them.

After dropping a pile of letters in the tube up to her dad, Luna got up and went to prepare some tea and hot cereal. It didn't seem as though the Professor would be joining her in the kitchen this morning, so she would humour him just this once and bring his breakfast to his room. She'd be sure not to make a habit of it; sometimes, people had to be trained. She'd tell him directly that this wouldn't be a regular thing.

His door was slightly ajar, so she tapped the door with her foot, hands occupied by the tray. Inside, the first thing she noticed was the cold; Snape must have left a window open. Then her eyes moved to the settee over next to the desk, and the dark huddle in the centre of it. Luna set the tray down and hurried over.

Snape wasn't really conscious, though he was talking a fair amount, faintly and without saying anything recognizable as English. He was caught in a tangle of his own robes, as though he'd tried to curl into a ball and wrap them around himself to keep in the warmth. His hair and clothes were soaked with sweat, and the red flush mottling his ordinarily chalk-white skin was so dark it looked like a rash. Periodically, as Luna stood above him and watched, he gave a hoarse cough that made it sound like things were rattling around inside his chest that shouldn't be loose. Luna sighed, and felt his burning forehead. So much for "just this once."

* * *

"Do the best you can with him, I suppose," sighed Mr. Lovegood. He gave his daughter an apologetic smile over the still form of Professor Snape, now tucked snugly between cool sheets and dressed in a clean nightshirt. "I'm afraid I won't be able to relieve you permanently until after the issue goes to press. I'm awfully sorry about this, Luna."

"It's okay, Dad," she said, quite sincerely. She folded a wet flannel and laid it on Snape's scarlet forehead. "It's not as though I have much else to do." She smiled back at him. "This will be good for me—like a project."

"That's my girl." He leaned over the Professor and gave her a peck on her forehead. "I promise I'll make it up to you."

Once her father was gone, Luna pulled a chair up beside the bed and opened _A Field Guide to Magical Creatures of the Amazon_.

An hour (and about fifty pages) later, she heard stirring from the bed. She put down the book.

"Wha—" He dissolved into a fit of coughing after managing one hoarse syllable. Luna picked up the glass of water next to the bed and held it to his lips. He barely seemed aware that it was there. "You have pneumonia," she told him, divining his truncated question.

Snape lapped listlessly at the water in the glass like a cat drinking from a dish. "Potion…?" he murmured, apparently having learned it was best to limit his words.

"We gave you Pittman's Pulmonary Panacea," she said, hoping she was responding to the correct question. "The bottle said it will take three days to work, though, and we're to give you nothing for the fever, which has to break on its own. We're sorry about that."

"Pittman's…" His eyes were open but unfocused; his breathing sounded like his chest had been packed with wet sand. "…pointless…placebo…"

"Yes, well…it's the best we could do, I'm afraid. I'll look after you, don't worry. You'll be better in no time at all."

"No doubt." He descended into more great, hacking coughs. Two beads of sweat trickled down his temples into his hairline. "I'll sleep now," he added, quite unnecessarily.

"A good idea." Luna sponged his forehead with the flannel. "I'll be right here should you need anything."

He was already snoring, his breath rattling in his chest like a coin in a rusty tin can.

* * *

The bottle _had_ said it would take three days to work; what Luna hadn't realised was just how long three days was when you were doing nothing but sitting by someone's bedside with a book. She completed her letters to Harry, Neville and Ginny quite early on, making her best attempt to cheer them up about their respective boredoms. She even offered a few suggestions about how they might fill up their time, with the sad suspicion that her advice wouldn't be taken; none of her friends seemed to share her interest in butterbeer cork-collecting.

Snape gave the impression of being a difficult patient, but he was unconscious too much for her to know for sure. It was a smooth process, as illnesses went. His fever broke the first night, and by the next day, he was well enough to sit up in bed and eat a bowl of soup. By that evening, both fever and cough seemed largely gone, but he continued to sleep like the dead. Luna had begun to worry until she read the fine print on the back the bottle of Pittman's Pulmonary Panacea, which said: _Side effects: Virtually uninterrupted sleep for duration of recovery period_. Perhaps it was a sign that said recovery period was drawing to a close that a little after eight o'clock, Snape awoke and asked her to help him to the bath.

Luna started the water running in the tub while Snape sat on the toilet lid and dozed. He snored lightly as Luna went about gathering soap, shampoo, flannel and towels. Soon, steam began to drift into the hallway.

She shook his shoulder gently and he awoke with a snort. "Are you sure you're awake enough for this?" she asked, thinking about how heavy he looked and what she would do if he should pass out in the tub.

"Why wouldn't I be?" he snapped weakly.

She helped him to his feet and led him toward the now-filled tub. He halted at the sight of the water and glared down his nose at her. "Miss Lovegood, when were you planning on leaving?"

"Leaving?" She crinkled her brow. What on earth was he—? "Oh! Well, I think under the circumstances it'd be best if I stayed, wouldn’t you agree?"

"No, I rather wouldn't," he said coldly. "My dignity is in short supply these days, and I'd prefer not to be observed bathing by former students, if it's all the same to you."

"You'll fall," she said, and didn't move.

They stared tensely at one another. Finally, he sighed. "Just look the other direction," he said, too weak to muster up a full-fledged sneer.

Really, people could get embarrassed over the most trivial things, Luna thought as she averted her eyes from her disrobing professor. She heard the splash as he placed his foot in the tub, then felt him wobble on her arm as he shifted his weight. She didn’t even think as she turned back to steady him.

A loud, irritated throat-clearing made her look quickly away, but not before she'd caught an eye-opening glimpse. Now, it was all she could do not to turn and look again, and look, and look, until he hexed her. Perhaps she'd sneak a glance when he was facing away.

As Snape settled with gentle splashing into the tub, Luna sat on the edge of the toilet and ruminated. Neville's penis hadn't been nearly that large. True, she'd never actually _seen_ it—just felt it in the dark. But just based on touch alone, she knew it looked nothing like Snape's, which was thick and dark and surrounded by quite a lot of hair. Snape's was a little scary-looking, actually. She licked her lips and summoned a picture of it in her mind again.

The sound of shampoo being squeezed from the bottle reached Luna's ears. After a moment, the sounds of soft splashes ceased and Snape's weary voice came hesitantly.

"Miss Lovegood…might I trouble you…"

He seemed to be purposefully avoiding her eyes as he handed her the shampoo bottle. She knelt behind him on a towel, humming a bit to herself as she worked the shampoo into his long, lank hair. Then, ever so casually, she looked over his shoulder as she massaged his scalp.

It floated, she was amused to discover. His penis bobbed like a cork, big and red between his pale thighs, the dark hair on his belly floating and drifting like seaweed in the bathwater.

"Surely there are young men at Hogwarts who would be more than happy to show you their cocks if you're so determined to see one," Snape muttered caustically.

"Oh yes!" she replied brightly. "But they're just boys. Yours isn't anything like theirs at all." Snape apparently had no answer for that. She bit her lip for a moment, then had a sudden inspiration. "If you won't let me look at it," she offered, "perhaps you could let me touch it?"

Noting his shocked silence, she added helpfully, "Neville didn't used to mind, as long as we were in the dark."

"Miss Lovegood." Snape's voice had a funny squeezed quality to it, as though he was trying to hold in a scream. His mouth opened and closed several times with no sound coming out. Finally, he announced, "I would appreciate knowing as little about Longbottom's sex life as I can. And no," he added hastily, "you may _not_ touch it."

Sighing, she returned to her seat on the toilet as he dunked his head under the water and rinsed. Men could be so odd sometimes.

After several more minutes of listening to the sounds of his washing, she said softly, "I think it's lovely."

The splashing stopped abruptly. Then, "Yes, well—I'm delighted you think so. The fact that you flagrantly violated my privacy has now completely ceased to matter to me."

Ah, she noted ruefully. That was sarcasm.

Back in the bedroom, Luna turned away while Snape struggled into a clean nightshirt. Turning back around, she said, "You'll want to dry that," pointing to his hair. "You could catch cold again."

"That's an old wives' tale," he muttered as he eased himself back into his bed. But he grabbed his wand from the bedside table and cast a drying charm anyway.

* * *

At a quarter to eleven, Snape jerked suddenly awake and half-sat up, startling her so that she dropped her book. He was breathing heavily, and a new sweat had broken out on his brow.

"That's funny," she said, pressing her hand to his forehead. "I wouldn’t think your fever would return…"

"Not a fever," he admitted reluctantly. "A dream."

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, he awoke suddenly again. Then again, a half hour after that. "I don't suppose you have any Dreamless Sleep?" he asked after the third time, not looking at her.

"No." She set the book down. "We've only Madcap Morpheus' Soothing Slumber."

His mouth puckered as though he'd just bitten into a rancid peach. "Of all the—have you people bought potions from every quack, charlatan and dragon-oil salesman in Britain? Never mind, don't answer that." He sighed. "Fine. I'll take it."

Luna fetched the potion.

Snape smacked his lips after downing the dose and handed the bottle back to her. "Not bad, really," he said to himself, "wish Dreamless Sleep tasted that good…" Then he sank abruptly back against the pillows, a startled look in his eyes even as the lids dropped like hastily drawn curtains. "Bloody…stuff really…works…" A moment later, he was snoring.

* * *

Luna sat straight and stiff in her chair, her book closed on the floor. The candle had blown out and she hadn't relit it. Snape was no longer snoring. He was lying perfectly still on his back with his arms at his sides—almost like a corpse in a casket, she thought. His chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly.

She had barely read a word all night. Inside her head, things were in an uproar. Until tonight, she had always thought that boys were simply miniature men (or maybe it was that men were simply overgrown boys). But that had been before she knew what an actual man looked like. Neville's body was still halfway like a child's, soft in places and without much hair. Snape's body was—well, all she could think to say was, _too much_. Too much hair in all kinds of funny places—on his chest, in his crotch, under his arms, even on his belly. Too much white skin where hair was awkwardly absent. Big heavy-boned limbs that were too long, a trunk that was too thick, a penis that was too large, too red. Not at all like a boy's body—a grown man's body.

The picture of it in her mind gave her a kind of molten, trembly feeling between her legs. And to think, it was all just a few feet away…all she had to do was pull back the sheet and the nightshirt and she could see it all again…

He would be furious. He might hex her, even as ill as he was. But he had also just taken a very powerful sleeping draught. The last time she'd taken Madcap Morpheus' Soothing Slumber, she'd managed to sleep through their doorbell. He would never know what she'd done. She could look and look to her heart's content and he'd sleep on like a baby in a bassinette.

She leaned over him and listened for a moment as his slow breaths tickled her ear. He smelled like anise and smoke, and sweat. She suddenly wondered what his skin tasted like. Her head tipped forward.

 _I just licked my professor_ , she noted calmly, and giggled.

With one last deep breath, she pulled back the sheet. His shapeless, old-fashioned nightshirt reached the middle of his shins, and what she could see of his legs was very pale and hairy. His feet were so much larger than hers, with long crooked toes. Her palms were sweating a bit as she took hold of the bottom of the nightshirt and carefully drew it up—and up, and up, until it was bunched in his armpits and the hem lay across his chest.

His skin was so white it seemed to glow. He was tall and broad (much bigger than her father) so there was quite a lot of skin. It just seemed to go on and on, and she felt like she was drinking it with her eyes, except that the longer she looked, the thirstier she felt. It was such a marvellous body. There were a few odd things, like the way the hair on his legs went up to his thighs and just stopped, and then grew in funny patches on his chest and belly, and it was very thick indeed in his crotch. The parts of his body without hair looked so bare and vulnerable that she couldn't hold back a little laugh. His nipples were not like hers at all—hers were large and pink, but his were small and flat and dark, surrounded by little swirls of hair, which looked very soft.

Once her eyes had drifted to the place where his thighs joined, she couldn't look at anything else. In the centre of that thick, soft hair, like jewellery laid on cotton wool, were his penis and testicles (bollocks, Neville had called them). She leaned closer, excited and fascinated, so she could have a proper look. Until now, her impression had been that a man's penis was a skinny, featureless appendage, like a thumb perhaps. That’s not what Snape's was like at all. It was a deep red, and it had a kind of head on it, or a cap, a bit like a mushroom. Of its own accord, her hand shot out and she ran a finger down the length of it.

It felt hot, and smooth, and a little spongy. The tip was even smoother than the rest, and her finger circled around the little slit in the end just to keep feeling the strange, silky texture. Then it moved, and she jerked back her hand.

Somehow, she'd thought it might not react to her touch if he was asleep. But she'd forgotten Neville telling her that a particularly nice dream could make a man come. She often forgot that men's penises often behaved as though they had minds of their own. She reached out again and watched, rapt, as it slowly grew thicker and longer under her touch. As it stood out and away from his body, it became darker, almost purple, like the tip of her finger if she pinched it. It had a kind of angry, inflamed look to it, as though it were demanding that she pay it attention. She smiled—it was a bit like Snape himself.

Carefully, she sat down on the bed at Snape's side and reached out to touch his body. First she wanted to feel that amazing hair that was all over him, so she combed the tips of her fingers through the patch on his belly, which made a kind of line down his middle. It wasn't as soft as it looked; it felt crinkly and wiry. Then she ran her index finger over the smooth, hairless skin of his hip; it felt just like hers.

She'd learned how to touch a man's penis so that he had an orgasm from the few times she'd been with Neville in the dark; they'd never gone so far as actual sex, but they'd used their hands on each other, and she thought she had a decent idea of how it worked. She wrapped her hand around his penis experimentally.

All of a sudden, Snape made a low, sleepy moan. Her eyes snapped to his face, her heart pounding, until she saw that he was still sound asleep. But his body, it seemed, was not. His hips shifted so that his penis rubbed against her hand, as though telling her to hurry up. She squeezed it a bit harder and let it slide through her closed hand.

Gradually, she got the hang of moving her fist up and down so that Snape continued to make those soft, sleepy noises. He always grew a bit louder when her palm grazed the wet tip, so she tried to do that as often as possible. A bit of saliva on her hand made it slide around his penis much easier; she found she could squeeze very hard it would still slip through her grip. Before long, Snape made a strangled noise in his throat and his whole body went rigid, and the penis in her hand seemed to swell and then pulse, and all of a sudden warm liquid was spilling out the tip, dribbling thick and sticky over her hand. She wiggled and flexed her fingers in the goo with pleasure; there was a delightful dirtiness about it, like painting with your fingers when you were little, or getting yourself covered in flour in the kitchen. When Snape's muscles had all gone limp, Luna tenderly lay the wet, softened penis back where it belonged, as both it and Snape returned to a deep slumber.

For a while, she simply sat still and watched him sleep, watched as his chest rose and fell, as his even breaths made a piece of his long hair flutter against his pillow. He had a very large nose, she noticed, and a very pointy chin. At Hogwarts, you were supposed to think Snape was ugly; that was what everybody said. But she simply couldn't see it. He was lovely, especially his body—every pale, hairy, glorious inch of it. She had not seen very many men without their clothes before, but if this was what they _all_ looked like, she wasn't sure how she'd be able to keep from running through the streets of town, tugging the shirts and trousers off of every strange man she met.

She wanted to keep exploring him, but she was growing tired. Sitting in the chair by Snape's bedside all day had made her stiff and headachey. Settling for a gentle kiss on one red nipple, she pulled down his nightshirt, tucked up the sheets, and headed to the bathroom to wash her hands.

* * *

Madcap Morpheus' Soothing Slumber did _not_ produce dreamless sleep. It was, however, soothing.

Snape dreamed of a creature. It had yellow hair and smelled like a cherry orchard, and it spoke with a voice both exotic and deeply, achingly familiar.

Its hands were as delicate and fragile as a doll's, but its skin was warm and velvety as it tickled him below his navel. It was petting him, quieting him, and he was drifting into lassitude—all except for the exquisitely urgent _want_ in his groin. The creature seemed aware of that; it was touching him there now, shocking like the touch of a naked flame, and as ecstasy radiated from his middle and flooded out the pain in his limbs he only now recognised by its absence, he knew he had never been this happy, never belonged somewhere so totally, never been at such profound peace, except perhaps in the days before he learned speech when he slept days and nights curled against his mother's breast.

A warm breeze tickled his bare skin, and the creature laughed. He thought he could see its eyes somewhere far above him, round and lambent, like watery planets setting in a warm twilight. He smiled, and hoped with all his heart that he had died sometime in the night so that he could stay here for eternity.

* * *

When he awoke, his room was filled with bright sunlight that made him blink. He sat straight up in his bed.

"I feel like I may never need to sleep again," he said as Luna set a tray down on the bedside table. She looked at him speculatively, frowning and tilting her head from side to side, then pressed a diagnostic hand to his forehead. "That never works," he grumbled.

"My mother did it and it worked for her," Luna said in a way that defied him to continue the argument. "Are you feeling ill at all?"

"Not in the slightest." He scowled. "It can't have been pneumonia."

"Or," she grinned, "the potion could have worked."

He sniffed and didn't bother to reply.

His eyes followed her as she drifted around the room, straightening furniture and opening a window on the far side. Odd she undoubtedly was, but she wasn't entirely useless, he thought as he inhaled the pleasant scent of fried eggs and grilled tomatoes coming from the bedside table. Then his eyes lit on the desk, and his books—the book he'd been trying to read when he'd fallen ill had been closed and placed on the edge of the settee. All of his feelings from three days earlier—the despair at his dismal circumstances, the absurd self-pity, the panic—came trickling sluggishly back.

Luna must have noticed his despondent expression, because he found her sitting on the edge of his bed suddenly, leaning over him with a look of kind concern. "Is something the matter?" she asked.

"No, I—" He looked up and met her large, round eyes shining with sympathy. "I—huh." He paused and frowned. He remembered the dream he'd had the night before, the extremely pleasant dream… "Miss Lovegood, were you at my bedside for the entirety of last night?"

She nodded, her expression unchanging.

"And did you notice whether I—" He stopped. "Were you by any chance disturbed by my—" He stopped again. There was no way he was having this conversation with her.

"Did you do anything embarrassing in your sleep, you mean?" she asked sweetly.

"Yes." His cheeks grew hot.

"Well, _you_ might have thought so, but I don't see what there is to be ashamed of. After all, it's just sex."

His stomach dropped. "What…" he choked out, "precisely…is _just sex_ …Miss Lovegood?"

"A man can't help it if he has an orgasm in his sleep. Neville told me."

"That's it!" he snapped. "I _forbid_ you to bring up Longbottom in my presence from now on. And," he added, "I forbid you to use the word 'orgasm,' for the sake of my sanity and your virtue."

"Oh…do you know a better word for it, then?"

He clutched his head, pulling at his hair. "Miss Lovegood! This conversation is over."

"There's really nothing to get so upset about," she continued in the same calm, sing-songy tone in which she was capable of saying the most outrageous things. "I think you'd be a lot happier if you didn't get so tense about anything having to do with sex." With this, she began to rub his crotch through the blankets.

He jumped back, slamming his head against the wall and jarring his spine. He hadn't managed to escape her hand at all, which was still rubbing, slowly, insistently. It felt sublime.

She was still talking. "I can tell that _it_ wants me to do this, even if _you_ don't," he thought he heard her say. There was something mesmerising about her voice, some kind of strange hypnotic power that was interfering with the connection between his will and his body. He should be locked inside the bathroom by now. Why was he still sitting here? Her hand burrowed under the blankets and collided with hot skin, and the jolt of pure pleasure as her fingers grazed his morning erection left him weak and trembling. She leaned forward, her breath soft and warm against his neck. "Just relax and stop worrying about everything," she said softly, and placed a tiny kiss in the hollow of his throat.

He groaned and let his eyes slide shut and his head sink back into the pillow. If he didn't watch, it wasn't really happening, and thus he was free to enjoy it without fear. He spread his thighs a little as the cool friction on his cock increased—too light, the strokes uneven, a bit clumsy, but the mere fact that it was someone else's hand and not his own was more than enough. He sighed and thrust through her fist, wondering dimly if she would grow frightened and back off once she saw what a randy full-grown male could be like.

But she showed no signs of abandoning him. He put his own hand under the blankets and closed it around hers, showing her the kind of pressure he liked, and she quickly caught on. He cupped his balls as she continued to stroke him, picking up speed as his soft whines became moans and the thrusts of his hips grew jerky and uncontrolled. He came with a wordless cry, back arching, toes curling, dignity scattered to the four winds as his come pulsed over her still-stroking fingers and glued the sheets to his skin.

"Professor?"

He cracked open an eye. " _Please_ don't call me that. Not right now," he sighed.

"Okay, sir."

He opened both eyes. "Don't call me 'sir', either—for Merlin's sake." He sat up and saw that she was demurely wiping her hand off on the sheets; he reached for his wand and cast a cleansing charm, first on her and then on himself and the bedclothes. "Well," he said stiffly, not looking at her. "I think it's safe to say that that should never be allowed to happen again."

"Oh _no!_ " She sounded like he'd proposed cancelling summer hols. "I think we should do it lots and _lots_ of times again. I want to know—why doesn't it happen the same way for girls? Orgasm, that is?"

"Well, it's—" He felt his face heating up again and he couldn't bring himself to meet her wide, eager stare. "It doesn't serve the same purpose for girls—oh for heaven's sake, hasn't anyone ever taught you a thing about sex?"

"Professor Flitwick gave us a talk on the basics, so I know what all the parts are called and what goes where—but he rather hurried through it and he didn't go into any kind of interesting detail. And then there were the few times that I got off with—with that person I'm not supposed to mention…"

"All right, all right, I get the idea." He cut her off hurriedly. "Flitwick, eh?" He shuddered. "I'm surprised you weren't put off the idea altogether."

She giggled. "I do wish I'd been in Slytherin, I'm sure your lessons would have been _far_ more interesting. After all, like you used to say in Potions, there's no substitute for practical experience."

He marvelled at her ability to say such things while wearing an utterly deadpan expression. His eyes squeezed shut. " _God_ , this is so inappropriate."

"But you're not my teacher anymore," Luna protested brightly, bouncing onto the bed so that she was straddling him. Her face was suddenly very close.

He shrank back. "No, but I'm still a good deal older than you and I _was_ your teacher, which is quite enough to make this a Bad Idea—not to mention the fact that you are underage which, in fact, makes this criminal." He let out a frustrated breath.

"Oh, bother!" Her good mood seemed to have evaporated instantly as she sat back on her feet. "Is that a law the Ministry makes?"

"Of course. The age of consent for young witches in Britain is seventeen."

"So I have to be seventeen to practice magic outside of school _and_ to have sex." She sounded close to despair. "Oh, why can't the Ministry keep out of people's business?"

"It's for your own good," he said, fixing her with a stern look. "It prevents you from being taken advantage of. By dirty old professors, among others," he added with a sinking heart. "Oh _God_." He fell back into his pillows again. "Is it not enough that I've been disgraced and discarded by everyone of any importance? Must I now turn into a child molester as well? Is the universe set on transforming me into the lowest form of life imaginable?"

Luna had rolled over and was now cuddled up to his side. "Look, er—Severus," she said, trying out his name hesitantly. "You're being very melodramatic about this. So the Ministry has a law. It's hardly a _sensible_ law. I'll be seventeen in nine months—isn't it a little silly that the law believes that in November, I'll be too young to know what's good for me, but in December, I'll be mature enough to make my own decisions? It's arbitrary and it doesn't make a lick of sense. _I_ think I'm ready now and that's what's important."

Snape opened his mouth to interrupt, but she continued talking, a little louder than before.

"And you're _not_ a dirty old professor, so stop saying that you are. Other people might think so, but other people don't have to know a thing about this, do they? We're stuck in this house together for what could be months with nothing to do, so by my reckoning, we might as well enjoy ourselves. I'm simply _dying_ to learn everything there is to know about sex and really, if you think about it, this is the perfect opportunity. We should consider ourselves lucky, don't you think?"

He squinted at her. "You haven't been preparing that speech, have you?"

She smiled. "I've been thinking up bits and pieces of it over the last day or so."

"Well, consider this: no matter how ready and eager you may feel, in the eyes of the Ministry you are still a child, and I am a responsible adult. I am responsible for _you_ in the eyes of the law. I am a Hogwarts professor and a respected scholar in my field, and men like me simply do not go around _doing_ things like this."

"But you're _not_ a Hogwarts professor—not anymore!" He felt a keen stab at her casual acknowledgement of the fact. "You don't have any responsibilities to anybody right now, because you're stuck in this house with me until You-Know-Who either dies or takes over the world, so you don't have to go around carrying this big weight of responsibility on your back because it isn't _there_ anymore!"

He lay there, stunned. In a way, in a weird loopy Luna way, she was right. There _was_ no reason he should be better than this. He no longer had a reputation, certainly—he no longer had a career, either a public or a secret one—nobody was looking at him and judging him because nobody cared. He had finally sunk below the notice of society altogether. So why bother with morals? Those were for people with _lives_.

Luna was leaning over him, stroking his hair. "Severus?" she asked gently. He found himself leaning into her caress without meaning to. Really, what could be the harm? He had so missed the touch of another human being. The girl wouldn't tell her father; her father barely had his feet on planet earth. It was as she said—they were trapped together with nothing else to do. Surely he could take a tiny bit of pleasure and comfort—and it certainly seemed to mean a lot to _her_ , heavens knew why.

This last thought was the one that ultimately made it out of his mouth. "Why me?" he asked, irritated by the bewildered note in his voice.

"Because I like you," she said matter-of-factly, tucking a strand of hair tenderly behind his ear. And as far as she was concerned, that seemed to cover the whole of the matter.

 

**iii. A Teacher**

 

For Luna, the days that followed were almost like a dream.

Snape—Severus, she had to remind herself to call him, since he didn't like to be reminded that he had once been her teacher—had to be dragged kicking and screaming nearly every step of the way, but it was always worth it once he gave in.

"Fine—but no penetration," he said when she first climbed into his bed that evening. _We'll see about that_ , she thought. But if there was one thing she'd gradually been learning about Snape, it was that patience paid off. He was a bit like that South American Quetzalcoatl she'd read about, which had only been spotted when a wizard hid in a bush for ten days without making a sound and surviving on Cranston's Christmas-dinner-flavoured gumdrops. While the hours were ticking by, he'd probably thought it was quite a lot of trouble to go to just to see one lousy Quetzalcoatl, but when it finally appeared, scales and plumage gleaming orange in the setting sun, Luna was sure he saw how very worth the wait it was.

So Luna replied sweetly, "All right, if that's what you want."

Snape leaned over to blow out the candle but Luna stopped him. "No, I want lots of light," she said. "N— I mean, other boys always wanted to do it in the dark, but I want to get a good look at everything. Don't you?"

His dubious frown suggested that he was at war with his conscience again. Hoping to chase his worries out, she knelt over him and kissed him on the lips.

"Mmph—" He made a distressed little noise and his eyes fluttered shut as he seized her by the backs of her thighs and pulled her close. His eyelids were a delicate purple colour and his lashes were very dark against his pale cheeks. He looked strangely vulnerable and young.

She waited a moment before using her tongue. It was always funny tasting the inside of someone else's mouth, and a little hard to get past the lifelong belief that one ought not to be sharing someone else's saliva; but as Snape opened his mouth wider so they could kiss more deeply, Luna found that the warm, liquid feeling kissing spread through your whole body made you forget about those things almost instantly. She made a soft noise of her own and could suddenly feel parts of her body she hadn't been aware of a moment ago; in particular, everything between her legs was tingling wildly.

She suddenly wanted to do everything all at once. Snape seemed a bit dismayed that she was already tugging at his nightshirt, but he let her pull it over his head. "Well, there it is," he said dryly, "the thing you were so eager to get a look at last night." She smiled and looked at it with adoration; she decided she needn't mention right away that she'd got quite a good look at it already.

It was flushed red and half-erect, but when she reached for it, he grabbed her wrist. "Let's…slow down a bit, shall we?" he said in a tight voice, and pulled her so that she was sitting in his lap with her legs around his waist. She didn't say that this was actually much better, because now his penis was rubbing right up against her crotch; she didn't think she'd ever felt anything quite so heavenly. "Mmm," she said as they kissed again, and wriggled a little against his lap.

Her stomach fluttered as his fingers crept around the edges of her pyjama top; for a moment, they stayed there, stroking her skin lightly, and she felt her entire world shrink down to those spots on her bare skin where his fingers were stroking. Then he lifted the cloth, and her pulse pounded with excitement at the shocking touch of air on her stomach, then her breasts, and finally her shoulders.

There was a dreamy look on his face she'd never seen on him before as his eyes moved slowly up and down her body, almost like he was recalling a particularly lovely memory. "The girls in Ravenclaw say they're a bit small for my height," she confessed sadly.

He gave a soft snort and a lazy, dreamy smile played on his lips. "I—quite frankly, I haven't the words," he murmured, his eyes never leaving her breasts. Then he leaned forward and kissed one nipple.

Luna knew at that moment that she was never again, for any reason, getting out of that bed nor allowing Snape to get out of it either. They would have to eat there, and everything else—well, they could figure something out. They knew magic, after all. But nothing was going to get in the way of that wet, soft heat on her breast and the warm breeze of Snape's breath tickling her skin. She moaned her approval and he responded by running his tongue—right—oh Merlin, how had she gone the first sixteen years of her life without ever feeling this?

A deep chuckle vibrated through her chest. "I take it my-former-student-who-shall-not-be-mentioned never did this for you," he murmured, and she could hear the smirk in his voice.

"No!" She pressed on the back of his head and he responded by drawing her nipple further into his mouth, where he stroked it tenderly with his tongue. "He might still be my boyfriend if he had."

That produced a second laugh, and his hand closed gently around her other breast. His hands were very big, and quite rough compared to hers—his broad palm scratched over her skin, rather like a wool sweater. It felt wonderful.

She started to complain when his mouth left her nipple, but she was captured by the fact that his mouth was now moving even lower. She shivered and the hairs on her body all stood on end as he kissed and licked a path down her belly. His tongue sweeping inside her navel made her laugh, partly because it was a very funny thing to lick someone's navel, and partly because it tickled. His fingers were now running just under the waistband of her pyjama bottoms, and as his mouth sank lower, those fingers tugged down, until the material was sliding over her hips and fluttering down to her knees. A shudder went through her as more of her skin was exposed to the air and his fingertips continued to dance closer and closer to the place she most wanted him to touch.

She was up on her knees as he touched her, so she could look down to watch his dark head as it moved lower. She jerked suddenly as one finger slipped between her thighs and stroked her through the thin material of her knickers. They were already wet, and she could hear him sigh as he discovered this. The finger stroked her again, and again, and then it crept around the edge of the material to slip inside.

Luna had spent plenty of time in the dorms after dark exploring herself, and she knew by now exactly what felt best…but nothing could have prepared her for what it felt like to have somebody else besides herself touch her there. Neville had rooted around clumsily like he was digging for something in the soil, but Snape was quite different; Snape touched her much like she touched herself. She moaned aloud and squeezed her thighs around his hand, trapping it there. To her dismay, he pried them apart and withdrew it, but only to yank her knickers off her hips and to push her backwards onto the bed. Knickers and pyjama bottoms were freed from her legs and a moment later her thighs were being spread and his breath was ghosting like little electrified fingers over her wet, tingling flesh.

Her howl as his tongue touched her made him freeze, and suddenly his face appeared over the horizon of her stomach. "Your father," he said in a loud whisper. "Can he hear us?"

"No, he's in his office on the top floor. Keep going!" She pushed his head back down.

The hot mouth returned and she moaned in delight, wrapping her legs around his neck, digging in her heels between his shoulder blades as his tongue traced down one fold and up the next, swirled around her clit, then pushed shallowly into her vagina. No one had ever told her that people put their mouths down here; certainly Flitwick hadn't mentioned it. There was a slight sense of incongruity, of something going where it didn't belong, but she forgot about it quickly as pleasure overwhelmed her. The wonderful feeling was centred on her clit where his tongue continued to lap, and it slowly swelled like a bubble, spreading through her whole lower body and then creeping up until her breathing began to go funny; she was gasping and panting, and now there was a kind of buzzing sensation mixed in with the pleasure, like a sound that was too low to be heard but that vibrated in her middle. Her muscles were flexing without her meaning them to; her fingers and toes, her arms and legs, even her back which was arching almost by itself. That low buzzing was growing stronger, and suddenly it was too much, too fast, too—

Everything went quiet, like she'd put her head underwater. There was nothing but warm, rippling pleasure, lifting her up, rocking her gently in space, then softly laying her down. Her clit and vagina felt like they were glowing like hot molten glass; she half expected to burn Snape, who still had his face buried between her thighs. As she lay still, letting bliss slowly turn into relaxation, he appeared beside her and laid his mouth over hers.

"That's what I taste like," she observed with wonder as he released her lips. "It's…not too bad. A little like blood."

He didn't reply. He lay at her side, fingers playing lightly over her breast.

"Severus?" She turned to him, worried. "Are you okay?"

"Mmm…?" he replied sleepily.

"Did—did you enjoy that too?"

"You have no idea…" He buried his face under her arm, his large nose poking into her armpit. She giggled.

"Did you have an orgasm?"

"Hm?" He looked up. "Oh. Yes, I—I suppose I did." His head fell back down.

Strange. She hadn't even touched him. There was so much she didn't know about how men worked.

Slithering down his body, she tucked herself against his chest and wrapped her arms around him. He was big—so much bigger than she was. He was big, and heavy, and his limbs were hard, and the hair on his skin was rough, and his body had a strong, spicy kind of smell that she associated with men closer to her father's age than to Neville's. It was pleasant, actually. She breathed deeply and pressed her face into the coarse black hair in the centre of his chest.

His deep voice rumbling in his chest filled her head. "Don't tell me you're going to go to sleep on me now."

She looked up. "No. I was just smelling you."

He looked a little embarrassed. "Ah. Of course."

But then she did go to sleep. She hoped as she drifted off that he wouldn't mind.

* * *

For Snape, the next several days felt like a wonderful dream just on the verge of becoming a nightmare. The universe couldn't possibly let him get away with what he was doing; he just wasn't that lucky. It would all come down on his head somehow. Therefore, he resolved to make it as worth the price as he could.

Luna did not seem to be capable of shame. Apparently, nobody had ever told her that sex was something to be spoken about in hushed voices and the sexual parts of the body were vaguely dirty. She had no guile, either. She simply kept talking, in that airily distant tone that was normal for her, as she stripped off his clothes and began to do things to his cock that hadn't been done to it in more than a decade. On another woman, it would hardly have been erotic. But because of her utter naïveté about what the _rest_ of the world believed about sex, it was almost unbearably erotic. She took to each new pleasurable thing he taught her with the innocent delight of a child at Christmas, unwrapping his rather unremarkable middle-aged body like a brightly-coloured gift box, always overjoyed at what she found inside. Frankly, it was infectious.

He told himself he would limit things—oral stimulation, a bit of mutual masturbation, perhaps. A young girl could get a perfectly respectable sexual education out of that; there was no need to proceed to more irreversible matters.

One particular evening she lay naked on her back in his bed, her yellow hair scattered in tangled curls over his pillow, while he knelt between her legs and gently, thoroughly kissed the inside bend of her knee.

She was a tall girl; she still retained a bit of that "stretched out" look that teenage girls who'd suddenly sprouted up over one summer tended to have. Her breasts were an utter delight—just big enough to disappear entirely into the cup of his hand, with large nipples that were like velvet to the touch. Her arse, too, he found had quite an affinity with his hands, and when she was curled against him, it nestled in his crotch just right, like a cup fitting to a saucer. Her legs were long and skinny, her knees a bit bony; but on every inch of her body was skin so exquisitely soft that ultimately, there wasn't a bit of her he could object to. He wanted to become acquainted with all of it.

She was intermittently sighing and giggling as he passionately seduced her knee, and every so often, her leg would jerk when he ran across an especially ticklish place. He let one long finger travel up her inner thigh and he felt her begin to tremble, making breathy little sounds of mirth and arousal that were clearly intended to encourage him. He traced a little pattern on the satiny skin of her leg just below her groin, then calculated an "accidental" brush of his fingers against the yellow curls that were already damp with her excitement.

"Oh…hurry _up_ ," she moaned, and gave the small of his back a little push with her foot.

"You young people," Snape murmured, now letting the tip of his forefinger wind in the springy curls, "you must have everything _fast_ , mustn't you?" His finger nail brushed the damp flesh of her outer lips. "No respect…" it slid past them, finding wetness, "…for the subtleties…" then pushed further, "…one can only achieve…" and thrust deep into her cunt, burying his finger up to the knuckle, "…through _patience_."

She shrieked and crushed his wrist between her thighs—a habit of hers he found strangely endearing. He pried them quickly apart and drew out his finger so he could add two more, pushing deep into her body. Her second shriek was loud enough to make him cringe; just how far _could_ sound carry in this house?

"Oh…we have to try that…" she thrashed her head from side to side, "…with your penis…"

If there was one fly in the ointment, it was that Luna seemed to have learned all her sexual terminology from sex education classes. He concluded they would have to have a lesson devoted to the more erotic names for the various male and female parts.

He built up a rhythm stroking his fingers in and out of her cunt. She spread her legs and stretched her arms over her head, like she was making a snow angel—and he noted hungrily that it did wonderful things to her breasts. His thumb was now rubbing slow circles on her clit, and she was beginning to cry out in rhythm with his thrusts. The slick heat of her snug little pussy around his fingers was slowly driving him mad; he could do nothing but imagine it around his cock, imagine holding her slim thighs open and pushing her limber back into an arch as he pounded into her, watching those lovely breasts shake with the force of their fucking…he noticed he'd unintentionally begun rubbing his cock against her thigh as he lost himself in that fantasy of the thing he couldn't (yet, something whispered) bring himself to do.

Feverishly, he bent over her and settled his cock against her hip, then closed his mouth around a nipple as his hand worked her closer and closer to the edge. She'd now attempted clumsily to wrap her long legs around him, which was difficult since his arm was in the way, but her heels were successfully digging into his shoulder and he got the message clearly: _more, faster, harder_. He made an incoherent sound against her breast and let his hips move on their own, rubbing his (big, ugly, awkward) cock against her delicate skin, pushing and rubbing and thrusting, filling her cunt with his fingers. Her sharp cries were turning into little choked whimpers, and gradually they grew softer and softer until she screamed, and he felt her muscles rippling around his fingers, a new flood of warmth seeping over his hand as she sucked in great breaths and let them out with deep groans over and over, until she was quiet. Then she went completely limp.

He pulled his fingers out carefully and stretched along her side, letting the wet tip of his cock tap her hip gently, just to remind her it was there for when she recovered. Which took far less time than he expected. Before he knew what was happening, she was pushing him onto his back and wrapping her mouth around the end of his prick. "Here—" he half-sat up and grabbed her hips so he could draw her arse back around toward his head— "you'll like this." Fitting his hands reverently around the cheeks of her lovely little arse, he drew her pussy, wet and flushed, down to his mouth, and gave it a first, deep lick.

Her moan against his cock sent a new ripple of need through his body. His balls felt heavy and tight, and he was exceptionally glad that he'd taught her to take them (carefully) in her hand and roll them around a bit, because that, along with her tongue daintily probing the slit of his cock and tracing around the head, was nearly enough to end it. She wasn't able to fit all that much into her mouth, so he'd shown her the best things to do to the head, as well as to use her hand on the shaft, which she was doing now. He couldn't help a needy little thrust with his hips.

The smell and taste of her cunt filled his head, made him dizzy with new arousal—that sea-like, metal-like taste he knew he'd still be recalling hours later, and the next day when they both sat reading on opposite sides of his room. He licked each slick fold inside and out, felt the muscles in her arse and thighs quivering under his hands, felt the rhythm of her mouth on his prick falter a bit as she reacted to each new stab of pleasure. Air suddenly touched his cock and he heard her moan, felt the tension and trembling of her second climax, and touched his tongue to her clit one last time before his own orgasm struck, bursting hot and hard from his body, splattering his belly. Her hand captured some of it and used it to give his spent cock a few last strokes before she crawled back up to the pillow and tucked her head sweetly under his chin.

"So tired…" she murmured, sounding a bit bewildered by it. "Tomorrow…let's…" She trailed off as her breathing deepened and slowed.

As Luna slept the sleep of the just, Snape lay staring at the ceiling and wondered why again he'd decided it was so important to deny himself any of what had been offered. He'd already half-concluded this couldn't be real, anyway. Things this good just didn’t happen to him.

* * *

When he awoke, she was resting her chin on his stomach and idly combing her fingers through his pubic hair.

His cock was already at a lazy half-mast. He cracked an eye open. "While you're down there…" He gestured vaguely.

He shut his eyes blissfully as a small hand encircled his cock and stroked its length lightly. In seconds, it was fully hard.

She giggled. "It jumped in my hand. Like a fish."

He groaned. "Yes, charming image. Now, if you wouldn't mind—ah, _fuck!_ "

A jolt sizzled down his spine as a hot tongue alighted on the head of his cock. "You always taste a bit funny in the morning," he heard her say, more to herself than to him. Then her mouth engulfed him.

Sweet Merlin—he was already most of the way there. His dreams had been vivid, close to the surface, full of longing. His eyes rolled deliriously back in his head and he thrust gently, searching out more heat.

Her cool fingers were a shock on his sleep-warmed skin. They slid over his belly, tickling the hairs there. "I wish you wouldn't do that," he heard her say as the air struck his wet prick. "I'm only just getting the hang of this, you know." Then the sublime heat returned.

At just the right moment, he jerked his cock free from her lips and seized her hand, crushing it around his shaft as he thrust through her wet fingers and came, hard and long and groaning, all over his stomach. As he caught his breath, he opened his eyes and saw her wrinkling her brow at him, her lips pursed in confusion. "Trust me, you're not ready for that just yet," he said by way of explanation.

"Yes, well. Thank you for thinking of my well-being. Sometimes you're awfully like my dad, though."

He fell back on the bed and shut his eyes. "Merlin's trousers, girl, _must_ you say things like that?"

"It's just that I can decide for myself, I think. I've been wondering what it tastes like, anyway…" He felt her tongue lapping at the skin of his belly. "Hm." The tongue disappeared. "It tastes like…tears, in a way. Like the back of your throat when you've been crying. Only…thicker. Stronger." She giggled. "I can't explain it, really."

She plastered her long, lean body to his side and began idly pulling at his chest hairs. "Severus, I've got a question," she said. He grunted. "Do you suppose we could try sex today?"

He raised an eyebrow. "What were you under the impression we _have_ been doing for the last five days?"

"No, no. I mean, sex. Intercourse. Your penis inside of me."

"Ah." He opened his mouth, and stopped. Maybe she'd forget she'd asked and not wonder why he wasn't answering.

"Severus?"

He pretended to be intensely interested in his cuticles.

"Look, we've done everything else. What's so different about you putting your penis—"

"Cock," he said.

"What?" Luna scrunched her brows.

"Call it a cock. You sound like a Mediwitch giving a lecture and frankly, there's nothing less erotic."

"Oh." She blinked. "Okay. So—what is so different about you putting your cock in my vagina—"

"Cunt."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Call it a cunt, for heaven's sake! Or a pussy, if you must. Where were the other teenagers who were supposed to be teaching you all of this?"

She crossed her arms. "Fine. So, for the third time—what is so different about you putting your cock in my cunt that has you so tied up in knots?"

"You're a virgin," he said.

"What? I am?"

"You have never had actual intercourse. Therefore, you are a virgin."

"Well, what does _that_ have to do with anything?"

"It has to do," Snape said tightly through gritted teeth, "with the fact that I refuse to add 'taking your virginity' to the long list of questionable acts I have already performed with you."

And people thought _she_ had strange beliefs. "So? What's the problem with adding one more?"

"I am _not_ a deflowerer of teenage girls, Luna."

She had a thought. "Are you afraid you'll hurt me? Here, look—" she parted her legs— "I haven't had a hymen since I was eight years old, when I fell on my toy broom—"

"Great Merlin's mackintosh!" Snape threw his hands in the air. "Do you understand _nothing?_ "

Luna fixed him with a steady look. "I think I understand more than you do, Severus. I understand that these things you're so worried about don't matter, and that they're just outdated notions and stupid rules, not anything real about what's right or wrong."

"Yes," he observed listlessly, "I suppose none of it does matter." He put on a contemplative frown, pretending to be mulling over her argument, when in fact he was trying to think of the easiest way out. Finally, he settled on it. "I will consider it," he said.

She smiled and bent over to kiss him. "Lovely."

* * *

They'd fallen into a routine—sex in the evenings, and generally sex in the morning as well, depending on their moods (well, his, really). They hadn't seen hide nor hair of Elijah Lovegood for a week, and Luna insisted that he was always scarce when a new issue was due to go to press. Snape's instinctual paranoia told him to confirm her claims about what was typical for her father, but in a rather disturbing turn, he found himself caring less and less—about discovery, about continuing further down the slippery slope straight into the part of Hell where they kept men who fucked teenage girls—about all of it. His conscience had a bit of fight left in it, though. He had to find a way to put her off this notion of blithely throwing away her virginity on him.

By that evening, he'd had an inspiration.

"There's a thing that some people do," he explained to her that evening. "It's called anal intercourse. Do you know what that is?"

"Well," she replied thoughtfully, "I'd have to assume it's where you put your pe— your _cock_ , sorry—in my bottom. Right?" Her wide eyes looked like she'd just answered a question in class.

"Yes, that's correct. It's probably old-fashioned of me, but I'd feel more— _comfortable_ —if we did that instead of, er, the other way."

"Hm." A crinkle appeared between her brows. "I don't know…it sounds like it might feel kind of strange."

He gave her a smirk. "I thought you were the one in search of new experiences. 'I want to do everything, Severus,' I believe you said at one point."

"I do, I do…it's just…I think I may have to think about this one for a bit." She drew her legs up to her chest and began, apparently, to do just that.

Snape stretched out on the bed and awaited whatever decision lay at the end of the winding path that was being traced in Luna's peculiar mind. "I have a question," she said, much sooner than he'd expected.

"Yes?"

"Have _you_ ever done it? I mean, had it done _to_ you? Men have bottoms just the same as girls, after all."

He contemplated lying, then decided there was no point. "Yes, as a matter of fact I have."

"Well, can we do that first, then? If I see how you like it, maybe I'll feel more like doing it myself."

His cock twitched in his trousers. Luna, offering to fuck him up the arse…what good deed had he inadvertently committed that could possibly have caused the universe to be so generous to him?

"It's a deal," he said.

* * *

"Hm, strange…the skin here seems so fragile."

It was hard to get used to the sound of her flat, almost clinical tone floating back to him when he was naked on all fours and arching like a cat in heat. Her fingers made another experimental circle around his arsehole, and he hissed. Merlin, he'd forgotten how much he liked this.

"Put them _in_ ," he choked out.

"You mean like this?" Fingers wet with saliva were suddenly deep inside him. He bucked with a shrill cry. The fingers withdrew obligingly.

He sputtered, recovering himself. "Merlin's nose hair, girl! Be gentle! Think what that would feel like on your own arsehole, for pity's sake!"

Oddly enough, the fact that he knew her rather literal mind to be doing just that made his prick harden ever so slightly more.

After a few moments, the fingers returned, much more tentatively this time. They stroked, pressed, tickled. Then they pushed, hard, harder, until the tight little muscle gave and they slid inside. Not too much—just past the initial resistance, and stopped. He heaved a deep breath, and tried to relax.

She was fucking him shallowly now, just sliding the fingers back and forth a few centimetres, stroking the ring of his anus. Dear Hecate, where was she getting the instinct to do this? He shoved his arse toward her in a non-verbal attempt to tell her he was ready for more.

The fingers ventured deeper, and he shivered. Just a tiny bit more…

His cry must have startled her because her fingers jerked out of him suddenly. He snarled. "No, no, that was a _good_ noise! Put them back, dammit!" She obliged. He moaned as the soft pads of her fingers caressed his prostate, stroking across it with each pass. If his cock had been hard before, it was positively inflamed now—he could feel the need to come building like a static charge in his balls.

He briefly imagined what this must look like from the outside—Hogwarts' most fearsome professor, naked on his hands and knees with a lissom sixteen-year-old girl's delicate fingers buried in his arse, his wet prick waving in the air as he moaned like an eager slut. God, the photos would fetch a small fortune. And not in a good way. "Faster," he grunted over his shoulder, and she sped up the thrusts of her wrist.

It had to have been luck that allowed her to know exactly where in a man's arse to stroke—either that, or she'd paid careful attention to the location of the spot that made him squeal like a stuck pig. "Other hand—" he bit out— "use your—my c- my cock—" The girl was fluent in horny moron, bless her, and her cool hand stroking lightly down the length of his throbbing prick was the final shock he needed to set him coming so hard his vision went wobbly. When it returned, he was lying flat on his face.

Luna was giggling.

"You sort of—I dunno, _grabbed_ my fingers, there at the end," she laughed.

He lifted his chin and scowled back at her. "It's called involuntary muscle contractions, little miss smarty-pants—you do the same to me, you know, when you come with my fingers inside you."

" _Do_ I? That's so funny!"

"Indeed." He quirked a brow. "So…finding all of this terribly educational, are we?"

"Oh _yes!_ " Her face was lit with glee. Ah, he mused, if only he'd been able to light the faces of his young charges with such a love for learning back at Hogwarts. What a difference the addition of sex seemed to make for the attention spans of young minds.

"Well, you've convinced me—I just _have_ to have a go at it now."

"In the interest of full disclosure, it's a bit different for girls," he informed her. "No prostate."

"No what?"

"That spot you kept hitting that made me—make all those noises. It's called the prostate. Girls don't have them."

"Hm. I think Professor Flitwick mentioned a prostate gland. That's the part that makes semen, right? Funny that I could _touch_ it inside you. That's interesting…" She drifted off in thought for a moment, then returned abruptly, seemingly with new resolve. "All the same," she declared, "I think I'd still like to have a go."

"Very well." He presented her with his index finger. "Suck on this, if you please." Her wide blue eyes held his gaze unblinkingly as she took his finger into her mouth and swirled her tongue around it exactly the way she frequently did with his cock. A new stab of lust stirred him as he remembered.

Her round little arse had sidled around and fitted itself into his hand. He ran the tips of his fingers up and down the cleft to see how she reacted to the sensation, then touched her arsehole tentatively with his wet finger. Her buttocks clenched reflexively at first, then relaxed as she wiggled back against him, forcing his finger harder against her. Carefully, he began to work the tip of it inside.

"Are you going to use your cock?" she asked. "That would be more interesting, don't you think?"

"Well…" He dithered. "I thought initially perhaps we'd just try…"

"Come on, Severus!" She hopped into lap and rubbed aggressively against his groin, then began to kiss him—hard. Her small hand fisted in his hair and he found his head falling backward as she yanked, then began scattering kisses along his jaw and throat. He realised at some point that she was humming happily to herself.

He had to admit, she did drive a hard bargain.

"Luna, don't attempt to—Luna—" She had reached his ear. He rued the day he had ever confessed how erotic he found this particular seduction technique—she was licking around the inside of the shell now, running her tongue down to the lobe, taking it between her teeth. Heavens, he was already fully erect again. She breathed damply into his ear, and in spite of himself, he rubbed the head of his cock between her buttocks. She bit down on his earlobe gently.

"Please?"

He sighed. "We're going to need a lubricant. And it may hurt a bit, initially. Just warning you." He gasped as her tongue found a sensitive spot just below his ear.

As she clambered onto her hands and knees and looked over her shoulder at him with a cheerful smile, he remarked how strange it was, fucking someone who actually liked him.

* * *

Snape was busy behind her for a while, stretching and preparing her with the lotion he'd found in her bathroom. It felt weird…not bad, actually rather good, but certainly not the way being touched in the front felt.

When his cock slid into her, it burned a bit, but she felt no real pain. As he thrust deeper, the burn was replaced by the extremely odd feeling of being filled. At first, she found the experience more bizarre than pleasurable. There was a certain intensity of sensation to it that was undeniably exciting, but it felt too much like using the loo to agree with her—that is, until Snape introduced a new element into things and began to slowly rub her clit with his fingers. That changed everything. Suddenly, the strange feeling in her bottom was exciting in an entirely different way. His cock moved in and out of her slowly, carefully—he kept asking if he was hurting her and didn't seem to believe her replies—and the odd feeling became electric, filling her middle with prickly, tingly heat. She cried out happily and shut her eyes, feeling the smile spreading on her face.

It got even better when the fingers massaging her clit were joined by a thumb that slid teasingly in and out of her cunt, shallowly, just enough to penetrate—and then it was like every nerve in her body that could possibly be stimulated was firing at once. Even the air against her nipples felt like it had grown rough, wicked fingers—she wished Snape could grow a few extra hands and touch her there as well, just to complete the experience. She came, shrieking, her muscles squeezing both cock and thumb inside her.

Feeling positively replete with pleasure, she rolled over and took his large hand and cupped it around her breast—better late than never. The fingers that brushed her nipple were still wet. "Did it happen for you as well?" she asked.

"Yes. You'll want to clean yourself up pretty soon."

"I can't, remember? You'll have to."

"Bloody hell." He flopped over, releasing her breast. "Must _everything_ at _every_ moment remind me that you're less than half my age?"

"Sorry." She was. "I know I've said it before, but it's a stupid law."

"No. No, it is _not_ a stupid law. That is precisely the problem. And if you are too young to practise magic outside of a school, you are _undoubtedly_ too young to be fucked by your dirty old schoolmaster. In the _arse_ , heaven help me! Merlin…" He looked skyward, moaning to himself more than to her. "Whatever made me think that would be _better_ …?"

"Stop it." She rolled closer to him and felt him tense. "You complain and you insult yourself and call yourself dirty, but you keep doing it. So somewhere in there, you must know it's not really wrong."

"Correct observations, incorrect conclusion. I keep doing it, not because I don't think it's wrong, but because I am weak."

"I won't let you keep doing this to yourself," she told him sternly. "You can't just beat yourself up all the time. Why can't you see how wonderful sex is? It's not wrong or terrible or dirty at all."

"You think that because you are young. When you get to be my age, you'll have learned that the most dangerous things in life are the things that make us feel good."

She sat up and crossed her legs, facing him. "Look, Severus—I think I know what's wrong with you."

He frowned and curled his lip contemptuously. "Oh?"

"You're depressed."

The frown deepened. "Am I?"

"Yes. You sit around all day feeling useless and thinking up new reasons to hate yourself. Well, it's time to put a stop to that. If we could just find something for you to _do_ , something that could make you feel like you have a purpose again, I think you'd be much happier."

"I'd be in perfect harmony with you on that point if it weren't for the fact that I _cannot leave this place_. If you'll recall."

"Yes, I know. But I have an idea. First, I…well, I need to tell you something."

He sat up quickly, his face pale. "Oh, God. What is it?"

"No, no, it's nothing bad!" She stroked his leg. "It's about that law."

"Ah." The relief visible on his face was comical.

"Here's the thing," Luna began. "We are at war. If we weren't, well, maybe that law would be all right. So kids would have to wait a few years to use magic—they'd manage. But it's _dangerous_ now, and since the school's been closed and we're all just sitting at home rather than being protected at Hogwarts, well…we're sitting ducks, aren't we?"

Snape was still frowning. But he was listening.

"So I was thinking…you remember the D.A., right? The Defence Association that Harry started?" Snape gave a stiff nod. "Well, I was thinking that's exactly the sort of thing we need right now. We could spread the word to people we trusted, and anyone who wanted to could come, and we could learn spells together!"

Snape was shaking his head. "It'll never work," he said smugly. "Have you forgotten that the Ministry can detect underage magic use? And how do you think they'd respond to fifteen or twenty underage magic violations suddenly occurring in one place?"

Luna wilted. "You're right. We'd have to find a way to do it without the Ministry finding out. How on earth could we do that?"

"Luna, put it out of your mind, there's no point in…"

But Luna was already up and hastily pulling on her clothes. "I'll be right back," she said excitedly. The kiss was still stinging his cheek by the time she'd vanished out the door.

* * *

"The man who made it for me called it a Cryptosphere. You know I've never trusted the Ministry, and I thought it might be wise to have a bit more…protection. If you tap it with a wand and say the proper incantation, it creates a large bubble around itself, inside which no magic may penetrate. Owls lose their way when encountering it; Ministry spells for monitoring magic use are baffled by it; it's highly illegal, you know. I imagine it'd be at least a year in Azkaban for me if anybody ever found out I had it. Why are you asking me, anyway?"

"Dad…" Luna twirled her hair around her finger awkwardly. "I need to ask your permission for something."

* * *

"We can do it!" She was bouncing on his bed. "I've got a way to keep the Ministry from finding out!"

Snape looked unmoved. "Dare I ask?"

"I'll explain it all to you later. The point is, we can do it!"

"Brilliant. So from now on, I can expect, not only to be trapped indefinitely in your house, but to periodically share my living space with some of the most irritating children it's ever been my misfortune to encounter. This deal just gets better and better."

"Severus, stop it! I want you to be our teacher!"

He sat up and frowned. "What?"

"Harry's brilliant for his age, but he only led the D.A. because none of the teachers could know about it! But now we've got _you_ —you know more about Defence Against the Dark Arts than any of us could ever hope to learn! You'd be perfect to lead the D.A.!"

"Luna." He took a breath. "There is one fact that you don't seem to have absorbed. I loathe teaching. I only do it because of my obligations to Dumbledore; otherwise, I would be as far from where children congregate as humanly possible. What in Merlin's name makes you think I would _want_ to lead the—the D.A.?"

"Don't you get it?" Luna sat down in front of him. "I understand why you must hate teaching potions year after year to hoards of students who couldn't care less about them. But this is different! Every one of your students would be eager, _desperate_ to learn! And what you'd be teaching them—it could save their lives! We all need to be ready—not just our parents, not just the Ministry who's supposed to be protecting us—or You-Know-Who will win! We _need_ this, Severus! And you're the only man for the job."

Snape sighed. "Have you considered a career as a barrister?"

She blinked at him eagerly.

He closed his eyes and sighed again. "I. Will. _Think_. About it."

"Oh, hurray!"

She was in his arms, her blonde hair flying about his head, covering his face with kisses.

* * *

"No. Absolutely not." Sirius shook his head sternly. "You're a wonderful girl, Luna," he said, turning to her apologetically, "and I owe you my _life_. But I'm afraid I have to set you straight this time. Snape is not fit to teach children, and he's _certainly_ not fit to teach them about the Dark Arts. May as well invite Lucius Malfoy in for a guest lecture, maybe have Tom Riddle give a master class! No. I can't allow it."

Luna balanced her saucer and tea cup primly on her knee. "Professor Snape is not a Dark wizard," she said calmly.

"You know, Sirius," said Lupin, who was leaning against the mantelpiece, "you really ought to give Snape a break after all this time. I think he's proved his loyalty adequately by almost getting killed, don't you?"

"Oh yeah," bellowed Sirius, throwing up his arms, " _real_ convenient, that. An excellent cover story…"

"Sirius, be reasonable for once…"

The sounds of their arguing filled the small sitting room of number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

"Hey," said Harry suddenly from the sofa. "Why do we need Snape to get the D.A. back together? Luna, you said your dad can fix it so that the Ministry can't detect underage magic—why couldn't we have Remus and Sirius teach us and leave Snape out of it?"

"They would be welcome to attend and teach as well," Luna replied brightly. "But we can't do this without Snape. There's nobody who could teach us more about fighting Death Eaters, because he's _been_ one." She looked around to see Sirius and Lupin both listening attentively. "We are at war," she said. "People will be risking their lives simply leaving their houses to attend these meetings. We can't just make do with a lesser option—we need what will give us the _best_ possible chance of winning. And that's Snape."

Looking around at the faces of her three friends, this time she saw no resistance.

 

**iv. A Hero, Again**

 

It took two weeks for everything to be arranged.

Snape demanded the securing of parental consent, despite Luna's protests. Sirius demanded he and Lupin be present, to "help keep an eye on things." Snape accepted the deal only on the condition that they refer to themselves as his "assistants." After a stint of yelling, a fragile accord was reached.

"Just one last thing, Severus," said Luna, resting her chin on his knee. "I won't allow you to bully Harry. Or anybody else, for that matter."

He gave her a stern look. "I do not _bully_."

"Well, whatever you want to call it. Pick on people. Embarrass them. Be mean to them."

"What you don't seem to understand is that some people refuse to learn unless provided with copious negative reinforcement."

"I know that's what you believe, but don't you think You-Know-Who is providing enough of that already? Being cruel won't work. _None_ of this will work if we can't all get along. I'm not saying you have to turn into Hagrid, just—if you have to be critical of people, at least try and spread it around evenly, instead of focusing it all in one place."

"And what will happen," Snape asked with the arching of one eyebrow, "if I fail at this requirement in your estimation?"

Luna smiled. "Well, I might just have to cut back on my _positive_ reinforcement."

* * *

The minutes before the first official meeting of the new D.A. began were somewhat tense.

Snape and Sirius sat directly across from each other in the Lovegoods' small living room, glowering at each other silently. Harry and Lupin kept trying to engage Sirius in conversation to break the tension, but their effort was undermined by the fact that Harry refused to even look at Snape. To make matters worse, the doorbell would go off once every few minutes and everyone in the room, already tightly wound, would jump out of their skins. Then a student would shuffle into the room and a new kind of awkward silence would descend.

"When the students are sent off to practice, I expect you two to assist me in supervising," Snape said coldly to Sirius and Lupin. "So don't think you can invite yourselves along and expect not to do any work…"

Luna shot him a warning glare.

"Good," Sirius replied with deadly calm, "at least then we'll be able to explain to the students how to _fight_ the Dark Arts, not use them."

"Sirius!" Luna gave him a scolding look. "If you can't behave yourself, you'll have to stay in the kitchen with my dad until it's over. No exceptions."

"Consider yourself lucky, Black—" Snape hissed, his narrowed eyes fixed squarely on Sirius— "that I didn't make this class 'humans only'—"

"Both of you!" Luna snapped, drawing up her most vivid memories of Professor McGonagall and doing her best to channel them. "Enough!"

Sirius frowned and sat back. "He started it," he muttered sulkily.

"I don't care who started it—you're both adults and it's both your _responsibility_ —" she turned an equally scolding look on Snape— "to behave as such."

Snape opened his mouth as though he were about to argue with her, but stopped when he saw her face. He glared back, and scowled. Then a remarkable thing happened. He schooled his expression into bland neutrality and turned to Sirius. "I…apologise for my remark, Black," he bit out, sounding ever so slightly as though there were a wand pressed into his back. "I acknowledge that you are fully human."

The doorbell went off again and Lupin leapt up to answer it. Sirius, mute with shock, managed to give Snape a curt nod. Harry was staring at Luna with his mouth hanging open, naked disbelief on his face. She grinned at him and shrugged. It was really so much easier than people thought it was, dealing with Snape. He was like any rare and elusive creature—you just had to have a bit of care, and a bit of patience.

One by one, more students arrived, until all space on the living room floor and furniture was filled. Ginny, Ron and the twins were there, as was Hermione, Colin and Dennis Creevey, the Patil twins, and Cho Chang. They all sat quietly with their faces turned toward Snape, waiting to see what they'd got themselves into.

Snape began speaking immediately, his voice quiet and grave. "I would first like to remind you," he said, "that you are here to learn, and anything I perceive as contrary to that purpose will result in swift and summary expulsion. Is that quite clear?"

Luna looked around. A roomful of upturned faces nodded.

"Good…"

* * *

Harry, Sirius and Lupin stayed for supper. Even Luna's dad materialised to join them. She noticed Snape was quiet throughout the meal as the others chattered, but there was an air of satisfaction about him, an absence of his usual prickly tension. He didn't even glare at anybody.

"It's a splendid thing, just splendid," her dad was saying, spearing another potato. "There's just one thing I don't understand, Professor Snape—what happened to your concerns about too many people learning of your whereabouts? When you first arrived, you know, you didn't even want _Luna_ to know…"

"The alternative was to languish and waste away in perfect safety," Snape replied serenely, and said no more.

Just before he left, Sirius offered Snape a cautious hand, and Snape cautiously shook it. He was almost smiling.

However, once the washing up had been done and Luna's dad had disappeared again, Snape began to sag a bit. She took a bath, put on her long nightgown, and sat cross-legged on his bed to plait her long, damp hair. Snape was still fully dressed, sitting stiffly on the settee.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

He sighed, uncrossing and recrossing his knees. "You know, any one of those boys who were here today would be a more appropriate companion for you."

"You think so?" She finished with her hair and tossed the long plait over her shoulder. "I don't think so."

"They're much closer to your own age. Some of them are even good-looking. I'm old enough to be your father, and even Sirius Black is handsome next to me. Really, you're making a very poor choice, Luna."

She grinned. "You think Sirius is handsome? I thought you hated each other!"

" _No_ , I don't think he's handsome!" He huffed. "I loathe him! However…in school, he always had a lot of popular female support..."

"Severus, you're very strange sometimes." She climbed off the bed and went to sit in his lap, putting her arms around his neck.

"So I've been told. You are free to discontinue this relationship whenever it suits you." Luna realised that the ridiculously petulant look on his face was his attempt to seem resigned and mature.

"Stop being so silly, Severus. I like you. You're my friend."

"Yes, yes, it's all been very nice…you've discovered all sorts of things about what two people can do together for mutual pleasure…but sooner or later, you'll figure out that I'm not the only man on earth capable of these things. There are other, more appropriate people out there who are just as qualified."

Merlin, he was as bad as Neville sometimes! Luna was beginning to conclude that while a boy's body might change dramatically as he grew older, his mind stayed much the same for life. She supposed she'd just have to get used to it.

"Severus." She sat back and studied his face. "I know why you're saying all of this. You're afraid that now I have a chance to see other boys, I'm going to want one of them instead of you. So you're trying to talk me into trading you in for them, so you won't feel as bad about it when it happens."

"That is patently ridiculous. I—"

She kissed him, hard. He tried to remain disengaged as the kiss deepened, but she could feel his cock stir under her bottom as his tongue gently explored her mouth. Breaking off the kiss, she sat back again. "Really, I've never met anyone like you. You're just not happy unless you've got something to worry and fret over, are you?"

"Perhaps…" His eyes were a little glazed, his breath a little faster.

"Tell me something. Do you still think I'm a child?"

He opened his mouth quickly, no doubt to lie, then stopped. His dark eyes studied her for a moment. Then he said, "No."

"And people who are not children, they have a right to make their own decisions, right?"

He nodded cautiously.

"Then you're my decision. Now stop being a ninny." She kissed him again. She noticed he didn't argue this time.

A bit later, they were naked on top of his duvet. His chest hair felt warm and scratchy against her back, and she could feel his cock nestled hard and slick against her bottom—but he was not making any sudden moves. His hands—his big, warm, rough, wonderful hands—wandered slowly up and down her body, playing with her breasts, stroking her belly, smoothing from her hip down to her thigh. Two fingers rubbed gently between her legs, not going inside, just tickling her pubic hair and teasing the outside where things just started getting sensitive. The lightness of his touch was exciting and frustrating.

She squirmed. He gave a soft grunt as her bottom rubbed against his cock. "Hurry up!" she said, and lifted her knee so that her thighs were apart and his hand could go where it wanted.

Hesitant fingers slid their way down and spread open her pussy; a third finger slid teasingly in and out of the opening. She could now feel his hips moving, his cock sliding back and forth in the cleft of her bottom; she arched her back so that it suddenly slipped lower, rubbing right across her open cunt. She moaned happily, and heard him gasp—with pleasure or alarm, or perhaps a bit of both. "Yes, now," she urged, and silently hoped she'd chosen the right moment for this.

He stilled. After a moment, she began to worry she'd bungled her chance by moving too fast. She didn't think she could stand that; her cunt was soaked and positively thrumming with need. _Something_ needed to be shoved up there, and soon. She wriggled her hips a bit, inching the head of his cock closer to her entrance, hoping to encourage him. Finally, her patience paid off. He slipped a hand under her raised knee to support her leg, and then with a slight shift of his hips, the head of his cock was inside her. She gasped, feeling herself grow even wetter, feeling his cock slide further inside on that wetness, feeling her cunt stretch around him. There was no burn like there'd been when he'd penetrated her the other way; there was just the warm, luscious feeling of being filled and stretched—and when his other hand crept around her hip to rub slow circles on her clit, she was crying out before she knew what was happening. His cock pulled out, then pushed back in, and the fingers on her clit pressed down, and she closed her eyes and let the incredible pleasure of it mount and swell.

She was a little surprised when he began to talk. At first she thought something was wrong, that she was _doing_ something wrong and he was angry. It was a reasonable bet, after all. Then she listened to what he was saying.

"Do you like that?" he asked gently just as he gave a very ungentle thrust. "Do you like the feel of my cock inside you? Filling your cunt, stretching you out?" She opened her mouth to answer but he kept talking without waiting for a reply. "Merlin, it's tight inside you…so tight, so wet and hot," he gasped against her neck. "To think your wet little pussy has been waiting all this time to be fucked…it's enough to drive me mad…" He was breathing hard, his voice breaking and becoming a harsh whisper. "You've just been dying for me to fuck you…"

"Yes!" she cried out and shut her eyes. She was getting a feel for this, for the sound of those deliciously dirty words spilling from his mouth. "I love your cock," she whispered back, trying it out. "Oh, do fuck me, fuck me _please_ …harder…"

The instant she said the word 'fuck,' he arched his back and groaned, slamming his hips forward so hard her teeth clicked. His mouth fastened onto her neck and a deep shiver went through her; she grabbed her own thigh to free his hand and he squeezed her breast, hard, pulling and kneading it, almost till it hurt. His other hand slid through wetness on her clit, around and around it as his cock moved in and out, and she wasn't breathing so much anymore as gasping, again and again, as each pulse of pleasure rushed through her with each of his thrusts. "Fuck me," she murmured, having learned he liked to hear her say that word, and he surged up into her. "Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me…"

Her scream as she came she felt more than heard; blood roared in her ears and violent pleasure ripped through her in wave after wave. Each of her breaths ended in a moan, and just as the blissful delirium began to subside and her head began to clear, he came with a cry, thrusting up, deep, holding his hips against her bottom as his whole body trembled and bucked. A few lazy pushes as he slowed, and then he pulled out of her, and went limp against her back.

She rolled over into his arms. "That was lovely," she sighed.

His chest rumbled with laughter. "Lovely? You said the pot roast at supper was lovely."

"It was! So was this." She burrowed her face into his chest.

There was a tense pause. "You know, Luna, most men would be a bit hurt to be compared to a pot roast."

She pulled back and looked up at his face. He was trying very hard to look unfazed. "Oh, you're _much_ better than a pot roast!" she said brightly. He looked at her with obvious doubt. "You are, I swear it!"

"So…" He hesitated uneasily. "Nothing hurts, does it? I didn't injure you?"

"Of course you didn’t injure me."

"And you're not…experiencing any powerful feelings of regret? Perhaps wanting to get as far away from me as possible?"

"Severus!" She sat up and leaned over him. "For the last time—it's just sex!"

He smiled with relief—a _real_ smile, for once—then pulled her down and wrapped himself around her. "Yes…yes, I suppose you're right." And for the first time, he actually sounded convinced.


End file.
